YANKEV-ARYE GEZUNDHAYT

YANKEV-ARYE GEZUNDHAYT

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland, at the beginning of the twentieth century.  He was a descendant of the Warsaw rabbi, R. Yokele Gezundhayt.  From the end of the 1920s until WWII, he was the rabbi and Orthodox community leader in Mysłowice, Upper Silesia.  He published articles in the Yiddish and Hebrew Orthodox press in Poland.  He was the author of Kohelet avi-even (Ecclesiastes according to Avi-Even), “beloved extracts” (Warsaw, 1938), 72 pp., in which he went through in a modern Yiddish various midrashim and portions of the Zohar on the theme of Kohelet.  He also includes his own thoughts on the essence of God, the world, and man.  During the German seizure of Upper Silesia, he suffered terribly and died a martyr.