הרב יצחק יעקב ריינס

Rav Yitzchak Yaakov Reines (9 Cheshvan 5600/1839–10 Elul 5675/1915) was rav of Lida, founder of the yeshiva of Lida, and founder of the Mizrachi movement. His father, Rav Shlomo Naftali, had gone up to Tzfat among the talmidim of the Gra under Rav Yisrael of Shklov and kept there a press for Hebrew sefarim; after the pillage of 5594/1834 and the earthquake of 5597/1837, which took his wife and children while he traveled abroad as a shaliach of the community, he rebuilt his home in Karolin, by Pinsk, where Yitzchak Yaakov was born. The boy was an illui who at ten knew masechtot of Seder Nashim by heart; he learned in Volozhin and in the kollel haperushim of Eishishok, and at nineteen married the daughter of Rav Yosef Reisin, rav of David-Horodok.

In 5627/1867 he became rav of Shaukenai, where a tangled din that came before him drew him deep into hilchot edut and gave rise to his teshuvot Edut B’Yaakov; from 5629/1869 he served as rav of Sventzian. There he laid out a new derech in learning that examines the halachot by the rules of logic, and his Chotam Tochnit, a sample of the method, drew letters of warmth from gedolim alongside sharp opposition. At the Petersburg gathering of rabbanim in 5642/1882 he proposed joining the language of the land and general studies to yeshiva learning; the proposal was turned aside, and he founded in Sventzian a yeshiva of his own on that pattern, Torah VaDaat, which stood four years amid fierce opposition until it closed.

After a period as maggid of Vilna and three months in Manchester, he was received as rav of Lida, and there in 5665/1905 he raised the yeshiva of Lida, in which limudei kodesh and limudei chol were learned together and to which talmidim came from across Russia. From his youth the yishuv of Eretz Yisrael occupied him — as a young man he exchanged letters with Rav Tzvi Kalisher, and he stood close to Rav Shmuel Mohilever of Chovevei Tzion. After two years of examination he joined the Zionist movement and attended the congress in Basel in 5659/1899, and in 5662/1902 he convened in Vilna the founding conference of the Mizrachi movement and stood at its head; that year his Ohr Chadash al Tzion appeared. The yeshiva of Lida he refused to attach to any movement — the yeshiva, he held, stands on its own.

Among his other sefarim: Shaarei Orah on Haggadah and Midrash, Orim Gedolim, Nod shel Demaot of hespedim, and Sefer HaArachim, brought to print from his manuscripts by his son in 1926. He was niftar on 10 Elul 5675/1915. His large work on shemitah and the heter mechirah, V’Zeh Devar HaShemitah, burned in manuscript in the great fire of Lida in 5652/1891; a summary that survived in his hand was printed for the first time in 5782/2022.