הרב יוסף רוזין

Rav Yosef Rozin (5618/1858–11 Adar 5696/1936), the Rogatchover Gaon, known in English sources as Joseph Rosen, was the rav of the chassidic kehillah of Dvinsk for close to fifty years and one of the most extraordinary talmidei chachamim of his era — a gaon of phenomenal memory with a derech halimud entirely his own. Born in Rogatchov in White Russia to Reb Fishel Rozin, a Kapust chassid, he was brought by his father at bar-mitzvah age to Slutsk, to Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the Beis HaLevi, and learned there about a year together with the Beis HaLevi’s son, Rav Chaim. After his marriage at eighteen he moved to Shklov and learned under the Maharil Diskin, and in 5649/1889 the Rebbe of Kapust, Rav Shlomo Zalman Schneersohn, appointed him rav of the chassidim of Dvinsk. There he served almost fifty years — apart from the years of the First World War, which he spent in Petersburg — alongside the rav of the misnagdim of the town, Rav Meir Simcha HaKohen, the Ohr Somayach, with whom he stood in excellent relations.

His Torah was a world of its own. He is estimated to have written some fifty thousand teshuvot — more than any other posek in history — in a style famously terse and cryptic, sending the reader from source to source with an endless ayen, ayen od. He would rarely cite any authority after the era of the rishonim, holding fast to the Gemara, the Yerushalmi, and the Tosefta; toward the Rambam, whom he calls simply Rabbeinu, he felt a personal closeness, and he drew on the Moreh Nevuchim even in halachic analysis. His derech broke each din down to its parts, distinguishing in every mitzvah between the act and its effect, and connected sugyot across the whole of Shas to matters seemingly far removed. Among those who received semicha from him was Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, later the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, and all his life he stood close to the rebbes of Chabad. His sefarim all carry one name, Tzafnat Paneach, the title Pharaoh gave Yosef: on the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah — his central work, printed in his lifetime — on the Torah, on masechtot of Shas, and volumes of teshuvot.

In 5696/1936, suffering from severe kidney illness, he traveled to Vienna for surgery and was niftar there on 11 Adar (5 March 1936); he was brought back to Dvinsk for burial beside the Ohr Somayach. His daughter, Rebbetzin Rachel Citron, came from Eretz Yisrael to rescue his writings, and together with Rav Yisrael Alter Safern-Fuchs, then the rav of Dvinsk, printed a volume of teshuvot and sent the rest as tiny photographs, mailed page by page to relatives in New York, until the Nazis took the city; both were murdered in the Holocaust, Hashem yinkom damam. A generation later Rav Menachem Mendel Kasher found a machine able to read the miniature photographs and founded Machon Tzofnas Paneach at Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchok Elchonon, which brought volume after volume to print; Machon Hamaor in Yerushalayim continues publishing the remaining writings today.