Rabbi Shmuel Teitelbaum zt"l of Gorlice

Biography

Rabbi Shmuel Teitelbaum zt"l was av beis din of Gorlice (Gorlitz). The identification is from the matzeivah itself, which agrees with the later accounts. The carved relief at the top reads “matzeves kever” of Rabbi Shmuel Teitelbaum. The marble plaque names “harav hagaon hatzaddik hechassid hamefursam, Moharar Shmuel zt"l, the ABD of Gorlitz,” and says that he judged Yisrael for thirty-three years. He is called the son of “the famous gaon, Moharar Elazar Nisan, the ABD of Drohobycz.” Some later accounts write the father’s name as Eliezer Nisan; the stone says Elazar Nisan. The grandfather named on the stone is Reb Moshe Teitelbaum, the Yismach Moshe of Uhel, founder of the Sighet dynasty.

He was born around 5574 (1814). He served as av beis din of Gorlice until the end of his life. Later accounts write that two of his sons afterwards served as rabbonim in Gorlice. He was niftar on 9 Cheshvan 5649. The matzeivah gives that Hebrew date; Hebcal converts it as 14 October 1888. (The Hebrew Wikipedia infobox once gave 14 August 1888, which does not match 9 Cheshvan 5649; the body of that article gives 14 October, and we follow the stone and the matching conversion.)

He was niftar in Krakow and was buried in the nayer Beis Hachaim on ul. Miodowa — not in the Remah Beis Hachaim. Your kvittel will be placed on his kever there.

Historical background

Rabbi Shmuel of Gorlice came from the Teitelbaum family of the Yismach Moshe, a path of Chassidus in Hungary and Galicia, and he spent his life as av beis din of Gorlice. At the end of his life he was in Krakow, and he was buried in the nayer Beis Hachaim on Miodowa, the same cemetery as the later rabbonim of the Krakow kehillah, not in the older Remah Beis Hachaim, which by then was no longer the regular burial place.

Before & after