Invitations to Four Weddings from the Chasidic Court of Munkatch (1933, 1960, 1984, 2008)

The most significant event for any Chasidic dynasty is likely the wedding of a child or grandchild of a Chasidic Rebbe; indeed, it represents the survival of an unbroken Chasidic chain from the Baal Shem Tov or Maggid of Mezhirech/Toledot Yaakov Yosef/Degel Mahane Ephraim – depending on your stance on the present-day scholarly debate between Prof. Immanuel Etkes and Prof. Moshe Rosman – to the present-day and guaranteed assurance into the future. The wedding of the son of R. Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, Satmar Rebbe (Williamsburg), in October 2006, was supposedly the largest Chasidic wedding in history and while the definitive study of wedding invitations from within Chasidic dynasties has yet to be written (and very much remains a scholarly desideratum), in this post below, there are several noteworthy invitations that were shared to me by collectors of fine Chasidica, and available for the readers of the Michtavim blog.

In 1946, the Klausenberger Rebbe, R. Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, married his second wife, Chaya Nechama Ungar, daughter of R. Shmuel Dovid Ungar, the Nitra Rav, in a Friday afternoon chuppa with the wedding meal taking place on Shabbat; the invitation is attached to this email. (The Klausenberger Rebbe’s first wife and eleven children were murdered in the Holocaust.)

I mention the significance of Chasidic weddings today – and, in particular, their invitations, – as this evening, Fruma Rivka Leah Rabinovitch (daughter of R. Hayyim Elazar Rabinovitch, Av Beit Din of Munkatch, and) granddaughter of the current Munkatcher Rebbe, R. Moshe Yehuda Leib Rabinovitch, will celebrate her wedding to R. Yaakov Rubin. I’ll be driving from Washington Heights and if you would like to attend, I still have a few spots in the car. See below (in the appendix) for the invitation; you can come as my guest.

Included in the appendix to this post at the Michtavim blog, as well, are several earlier invitations from the great Chasidic Court of Munkatch, namely those of the bride’s parents, R. Hayyim Elazar & Gittel Bailah Rabinovitch (1984); grandparents, R. Moshe Yehuda Leib and Nechama Perel Rabinovitch (1960), as well as the earlier invitation to the legendary 1933 wedding of Fruma Rivka Leah’s great-grandparents, R. Baruch Yehoshua Yerachmiel & Chaya Fruma Rivka Rabinovitch. The 1933 bride was the daughter of the Munkatcher Rebbe, R. Hayyim Elazar Shapira, author of the Shu”t Minchas Elazar. (See attached for the official Wikipedia picture of the Minchas Elazar.) As per a halakhic ruling of “the Minchas Elazar” (great-great-grandfather of the 2008 bride), who personally authored the text of the 1933 invitation, the pasuk at the top of the wedding invitation continues to be written, without a break, in the most recent invitation. On this point, R. Moshe Feinstein wrote in the concluding sentence of his 12 December, 1962 responsum in Shu”t Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah, 2:135 [vol. 5] (1973) p. 225, col. 2), that it was not his personal practice to write any pesukim on the wedding invitation of his children. (If anyone has copies of these invitations, please let me know.)

The wedding of the daughter of the Minchas Elazar – recalled as one of the greatest events in the history of the Chasidic Court of Munkatch and, indeed, of interwar Chasidic life – was videotaped by an (unknown) visiting American journalist, who interviewed the Minchas Elazar and recorded his plea for greater levels of Sabbath observance in the United States; turn up the volume and click on the following link for the video that first surfaced in California just over a decade ago, now available here and the complete version here.

Appendix:

(Klausenberg, 1946)

(Munkatch, 2008)

(Munkatch, 2008)

(Munkatch, 2008)

(Munkatch, 1984)

(Munkatch, 1960)

(Munkatch, 1933)