JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Rebbe of Ruzhin, Rabbi Yisroel Friedman had many descendants and it is no surprise that they conduct a tish on the 3rd of Marcheshvan which marks the day of his yahrzeit. However the Pashkan-Gilo rebbe, Rabbi Hoshea Ben-Shalom Friedman is probably the most unusual scion of Ruzhin, since he is at the same time a chasidic rebbe, the head of a pre-military academy in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem and has also served as the IDF’s chief Officer of Reserves, reaching the rank of brigadier-general before he retired from the army in 2017.
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In the same year he became an Admor after his father, Rav Yisrael Ben-Shalom Friedman, passed away. Rav Yisrael was born in Rumania and grew up in the house of his grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Friedman, the son of the first Admor of Bohosh who established his chasidic court in Pashkan. During the course of World War II, the chasidus was forced to move to Bucharest and there the young Yisrael Friedman, who had become close to Zionism, met Tziporah, the daughter of the Imrei Chaim of Vizhnitz, a distant relative, and the two escaped from Europe to Palestine, got married and joined a kibbutz in the Beit Shean valley. Rav Yisrael later fought the Iraqi army during the War of Independence when it attacked the kibbutzim in the region.
Rav Yisrael Ben-Shalom Friedman and his son, the current Pashkan-Gilo rebbe
Rebbetzin Tziporah Friedman, daughter of the Imrei Chayim, passed away in 2019
Rav Yisrael and his wife secretly maintained their religious convictions and their connection to the Ruzhin Admorim, eventually joining the religious kibbutz of Saad in the south of Israel. Friedman changed his name to Ben-Shalom while serving as a Jewish Agency emissary in 1964 but maintained the name Friedman out of respect to his ancestors. In his 40’s he became an academic, teaching Jewish history and completing a doctorate on the topic of “Beit Shammai and its place in the political and social history of the land of Israel in the first century C.E.” Later he left academia and taught Chasidus and Gemara in the Hesder yeshiva in Netivot and at his son’s pre-military academy in Gilo.
Rav Hoshea continues his father’s chasidic practices at the pre-military academy which is part of the only urban Kibbutz in Israel in the neighborhood of Gilo in southern Jerusalem.
טיש לרגל ג' מרחשוון יא"צ הרה"ק רבי ישראל מרוזין זצוק"ל זי"ע ע"י נכדו בן אחר בן האדמו"ר מפאשקאן שליט"א
האדמור היחיד לבית רוזין שנשאר עם מסורת רוזין. pic.twitter.com/rNKxKMlZ9D— ינון עידאן (@yinon_idan) October 20, 2020
יִזְכֹּר אַהֲבָתָם וִיחַיֶּה זַרְעָם: 170 שנה לאבי שושלת רוז'ין, הרה"ק רבי ישראל מרוז'ין זיע"א. נכדו כ"ק האדמו"ר מפאשקאן שליט"א ערך היום את שולחנו הטהור, בכניסה להיכל בית מדרשו שבשכונת גילה בירושלים. pic.twitter.com/hzrLxFLNAD
— מוטי קאפ (@moty_kop) October 20, 2020
Rav Hoshea Ben-Shalom Friedman conducts 170th yahrzeit tish of Ruzhin Rebbe