BENYOMEN-ZEV YAKOBZON (WOLF S. JACOBSON)

BENYOMEN-ZEV YAKOBZON (WOLF S. JACOBSON) (b. 1896)

            He was born in Hamburg, Germany.  He was a student of Chief Rabbi Spitzer.  He received ordination into the rabbinate from the rabbi of Berlin, Dr. Klein.  He was an active leader of Agudat Yisrael in Germany and in Switzerland.  He served as rabbi in various communities, among them in Copenhagen, Denmark, until 1943.  When the Germans seized Denmark during WWII, he escaped to Sweden and was active there in Vaad Hatzalah (Rescue Committee) in Stockholm.  In 1961 he visited the United States.  He began writing in German with a pamphlet Unsere aufgabe (Our task), concerning the Agudat Yisrael youth movement (Zurich, 1918), 8 pp., and later he published as well in Yiddish and Hebrew.  He was a contributor to Aguda’s Beys-yankev zhurnal (Beys-Yankev journal) in Lodz (1925-1939).  He also wrote for: Di ortodoksishe yugend-bleter (The Orthodox youth pages) (Warsaw, 1929-1933); Di idishe shtime (The Jewish voice) in Cracow; and Dos vort (The word) in Vilna; among other Orthodox publications in Poland and other countries.  His books include: Der kadish, di groyse bedaytung fun der doziger erhabener tfile, alyes neshome durkh kadish-yosem, di mekoyrim in talmud, midrash, poskim rishonim veaḥaronim, fershidene nuskhoes un minhogim (The mourner’s prayer, the great significance of this sublime prayer, spiritual elation through the mourner’s prayer, the sources in the Talmud, midrash, earlier and later commentators, various versions and customs) (Warsaw, 1932), 46 pp.—this booklet was initially published in German and in 1959 in Hebrew; D”r shmuel daytshlender, byografishe ophandlungen iber zayn lebn un shafn (Dr. Samuel Deutschlaender, biographical treatment of his life and work) (Lodz, 1936), 32 pp.; Haḥut hameshulesh, gedanken af khoydesh tishre (The eternal triangle, thoughts on the month of Tishre) (Lodz, 1939), 42 pp.; Eynike bleter oys mayn shvedishin tage bukh (Several pages from my Swedish diary), poems on the murdered women and children under the Nazis, published in Judeo-German in Romanized script (Stockholm, 1946), 16 pp.; the Hebrew-language text on religious law, Tikun eruvin (Emendation to Eruvin) (Czernowitz, 1938), 29 pp.; Perot mefuzarin (Familiar fruit), various religious writings about the Holocaust with several poems (Stockholm, 1947 and 1948), two booklets; Divre ben shelomo (The words of Ben Shelomo), concerning Agudat Yisrael and politics (Jerusalem, 1959), 800 pp.  He was living in Israel from 1949.

Khayim Leyb Fuks