צבי אלימלך שפירא

Rav Tzvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov (c. 5543/1783–18 Tevet 5601/1841), known for all generations as the Bnei Yissaschar after his sefer, was a chassidic Admor of the fifth generation of the movement and the founder of the Dinov dynasty. He was born in Javornik in Galicia to Rav Pesach, a melamed descended from Rav Shimshon of Ostropoli, who was killed in the gezeirot of tach v’tat; his mother, Ita, was a niece of Rav Elimelech of Lizhensk and Rav Meshulam Zusha of Anipoli. It is told that after her earlier children were niftar in childhood, Rav Elimelech promised her a son who would light up the world with his Torah and instructed that the child carry his name as a segulah for long life; since Ashkenazim do not name for the living, Tzvi was joined to Elimelech — and he was known all his days as R’ Hersh Meilech.

He was a talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin, of Rav Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, Rav Yisrael Hopstein, and of the Ohev Yisrael of Apta, and was close to Rav Naftali Tzvi of Ropshitz and Rav Tzvi Hirsh of Ziditchov; a tradition holds that the Chozeh told him he descended from shevet Yissachar. He served in the rabbanut of Dinov — the seat of his court — and of Ribatych, Strzyzow, Halicz, and Munkatch, then in Hungary, which he left after his issur on the fattening of geese, over the concern of treifot in the swollen liver, angered the town’s parnasim. He fought the haskalah sharply and labored to spread the learning of kabbalah, writing that the very language of the Zohar refines the soul even for one who does not understand it. His letters he signed “the faithful lover of all Yisrael, who seeks the good of his people.”

He wrote dozens of chibburim across all parts of the Torah, joining gaonic bekiut to a derush built on remazim and gematriot — among them Agra DeKallah on the Torah, much of which, his family told, was ruined by water damage before it could be printed. The crown of them all is the Bnei Yissaschar, maamarim on the mystical depth of Shabbat and the moadim arranged by the months of the year, which entered every circle of chassidim as one of the classic sefarim of chassidut — already in his lifetime he was called by its name. He was niftar in Dinov on 18 Tevet 5601/1841 at fifty-eight, leaving four sons and three daughters; his son Rav David filled his place as Admor of Dinov, and from him branched the courts of Munkatch and Bluzhov that stand to this day — among his descendants Rav Chaim Elazar Shapira of Munkatch and Rav Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam of Sanz-Klausenburg. His kever in Dinov remains a place of tefillah for chassidim.