צבי הירש קאליסקר

Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer (8 Nisan 5555/1795–5 Cheshvan 5635/1874) was a talmid muvhak of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, a posek of stature, and one of the earliest rabbinic voices calling for the return of Jews to work the soil of Eretz Yisrael. Born in Lissa, he learned there under Rav Yaakov of Lissa, author of the Netivot HaMishpat, and then in Posen under Rabbi Akiva Eiger. From 5585/1825 he served as rav and dayan of Thorn — for some fifty years, refusing all pay; his wife’s small shop sustained the household while he sat over Torah and the needs of the community, and fought, as his rebbe had, against the early reformers.

His halachic works earned him his place among the poskim: Even Bochan and the great Moznayim LaMishpat on Choshen Mishpat, and Tzvi LaTzaddik on Yoreh De’ah, printed in the Vilna editions of the Shulchan Aruch; his Emunah Yesharah engages the philosophy of the rishonim, and his Sefer HaBrit covers the Torah. With his rebbe Rabbi Akiva Eiger he carried on a famous halachic correspondence on whether the avodat hakorbanot could be renewed on the site of the Mikdash in our day — an exchange he later printed.

From 5596/1836, when he first wrote to the house of Rothschild urging the purchase of land in Eretz Yisrael, the yishuv of the Land became his life’s cause. His Derishat Tzion (5622/1862) set out his teaching that the geulah promised by the nevi’im begins by natural means — “little by little the redemption of Yisrael will come” — through aliyah, the purchase and working of the Land, and the mitzvot dependent on it. He convened rabbanim at Thorn, won the support of the tzaddik Rav Eliyahu Gutmacher, his fellow talmid of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, and moved Alliance Israelite to found the agricultural school Mikveh Yisrael. He never merited to settle in the Land he preached; he was niftar in Thorn at seventy-nine, a generation before the movements that would claim his name.