Stories of Tzadikim

From Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai to the tzadikim of our own century. 52 stories, each a printed book starring your own child.

• Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai - Carried out of a besieged Yerushalayim in a coffin to ask the Roman general for one thing - Yavneh and its chachamim. The Beis HaMikdash fell, and Torah survived.
• Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh - The nasi who rebuilt after the churban - fixing the order of the tefillos and holding a scattered nation together around one beis midrash in Yavneh.
• Rabbi Akiva - A shepherd who could not read a letter at forty, sent to learn by his wife Rachel, and came home the rebbi of twenty-four thousand talmidim. The water that carved the stone.
• Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha - A kohen and one of the great Tannaim, who gave us the thirteen middos the Torah is darshened with - said every morning before davening.
• Rabbi Meir - The talmid of Rabi Akiva whose reasons were too deep for his own generation to rule by, a sofer who wrote sifrei Torah, and the one whose halachos became stam Mishnah.
• Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai - Thirteen years hidden in a cave with his son, learning Torah with a carob tree and a spring outside. His yahrzeit is Lag BaOmer.
• Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi - Rebbi - who saw the Torah shebe'al peh in danger of being forgotten and wrote down the Mishnah, six sedarim that the whole Gemara is built on.
• Rav - The Amora who came back from Eretz Yisrael to Bavel and founded the yeshivah of Sura, teaching Torah to a country that had almost none.
• Shmuel - Rosh yeshivah in Nehardea, a doctor and an astronomer, who taught dina d'malchusa dina - and argued with Rav on nearly every page.
• Rav Huna - Rav's talmid, who grew the yeshivah of Sura to eight hundred talmidim, and was known for checking the walls of the town himself so nobody's house would fall in.
• Rava - The Amora of Machoza whose sharpness fills the Gemara - almost every machlokes with Abaye is decided like him, and his questions are still asked in yeshivos today.
• Rav Ashi - Rosh yeshivah of Sura for close to sixty years, who began gathering the whole Torah shebe'al peh into the Talmud Bavli we learn from.
• Ravina - Who finished with Rav Ashi what Rav Ashi began - the sealing of the Gemara, the end of the era of the Amoraim.
• Rav Yehudai Gaon - A Gaon of Sura, blind in his later years, whose Halachos Pesukos was among the first attempts to write out plain psak from the Gemara.
• Rav Amram Gaon - Asked by a faraway kehillah how to daven, he wrote out the entire order of the tefillos - the first siddur, and the grandfather of every siddur since.
• Rav Saadia Gaon - Gaon of Sura, who translated the Torah into Arabic, wrote Emunos V'Deos, and stood alone against the Karaim when it cost him everything.
• Rabbeinu Gershom Me'or HaGolah - Me'or HaGolah - the light of the exile. The takanos that carry his name still shape Yiddishe life, including not reading someone else's letter.
• Rabbeinu Chananel - Of Kairouan, whose short clear pirush runs alongside the Gemara on the page, explaining the sugya from beginning to end before arguing about it.
• The Rif - Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi, who wrote the Gemara over again with only the halachah left in - the little Talmud that the Rosh and the Shulchan Aruch are built on.
• Rashi - Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki of Troyes, a vintner who wrote the pirush on Chumash and Shas that every child opens first and no one ever finishes.
• Rabbeinu Tam - Rashi's grandson, the greatest of the Baalei HaTosafos, who argued with his own zeide's pshat - and whose tefillin are worn to this day.
• The Rambam - Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon - doctor to a sultan by day, and the author of the Yad HaChazakah, the entire Torah arranged, and the Moreh Nevuchim.
• The Ramban - Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman of Girona - Chumash pirush, Talmud, kabbalah, and the disputation he was forced into before a king, which drove him to Eretz Yisrael at seventy.
• The Rashba - Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderes of Barcelona, whose thousands of teshuvos answered questions from kehillos across the world for forty years.
• The Rosh - Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel, who fled Ashkenaz for Spain and carried the Tosafos with him - his psakim became one of the three pillars of the Shulchan Aruch.
• Rabbi Yaakov, Baal HaTurim - Rabbi Yaakov, the Rosh's son, who divided all of halachah into four turim - Orach Chaim, Yoreh Deah, Even HaEzer, Choshen Mishpat - the shape halachah still has.
• Rabbi Yosef Albo - Author of the Sefer HaIkkarim, who stood up for the Torah in the Disputation of Tortosa and wrote about the foundations of emunah for a generation under pressure.
• Rabbi Yitzchak Abarbanel - A finance minister to kings who chose exile with his people in 1492 rather than stay, and wrote his great pirush on Tanach on the road.
• Rabbi Yosef Karo - The Beis Yosef, who weighed the Rif, the Rambam and the Rosh and then wrote the Shulchan Aruch - the set table the whole Jewish world eats from.
• The Rema - Rabbi Moshe Isserles of Krakow, who spread the mappah - the tablecloth - over the Shulchan Aruch, adding the minhagim of Ashkenaz so it could be everyone's.
• The Arizal - Rabbi Yitzchak Luria of Tzfas, who taught for only a few years and changed how Klal Yisrael understands the world - and gave us Kabbalas Shabbos in the fields.
• The Maharal of Prague - Rabbi Yehudah Loew of Prague - Gur Aryeh, Nesivos Olam, and a whole way of thinking about Torah; the Golem story is the smallest thing about him.
• Rabbi Chaim Vital - The talmid who wrote down the Arizal's Torah - without him, almost nothing of it would have reached us.
• The Shelah HaKadosh - Rabbi Yeshayah Horowitz, whose Shnei Luchos HaBris joins halachah, mussar and kabbalah, and who left Europe to be a rav in Yerushalayim.
• The Taz - Rabbi Dovid HaLevi Segal, whose Turei Zahav sits on the page of the Shulchan Aruch and has been argued with in every beis midrash since.
• The Shach - Rabbi Shabsai HaKohen, who wrote the Sifsei Kohen at twenty-four, and lived through the gezeiros of Tach V'Tat that he also wrote about.
• The Baal Shem Tov - Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, who taught that a simple Yid's tefillah reaches as high as a scholar's, and that Hashem is found everywhere. The beginning of Chassidus.
• The Vilna Gaon - The Gra - who learned nearly every hour of his life, knew all of Torah, and set the derech of learning that the Litvishe yeshivos still follow.
• The Maggid of Mezritch - Rabbi Dov Ber, the Baal Shem Tov's successor, who turned a small circle into a movement by sending his talmidim out to every corner of Eastern Europe.
• Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi - Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, who was jailed in Petersburg and freed on Yud Tes Kislev.
• Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin - The Gra's talmid, who founded the yeshivah of Volozhin - the mother of all yeshivos - and wrote Nefesh HaChaim.
• Rabbi Nachman of Breslov - The Baal Shem Tov's great-grandson, who taught hisbodedus - talking to Hashem in your own words - and told stories that are still being unpacked.
• The Chasam Sofer - Rabbi Moshe Sofer of Pressburg, whose yeshivah held Hungary steady in a changing century, and whose talmidim carried his derech everywhere.
• Rabbi Yisrael Salanter - Who founded the mussar movement - learning not only what to do but who to become - and once said the material needs of another are your own spiritual work.
• The Netziv of Volozhin - Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, rosh yeshivah of Volozhin for forty years, author of the Haamek Davar, who closed the yeshivah rather than cut its limud.
• The Chofetz Chaim - Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan of Radin, who wrote the sefer on shmiras halashon that gave him his name, and the Mishnah Berurah that sits in every shul.
• Rabbi Chaim of Brisk - Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, who taught the Brisker derech of learning - and was known even more for how much of his own he gave away to the poor of Brisk.
• Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook - The first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, a talmid chacham and a writer whose ahavas Yisrael reached every kind of Jew he met.
• The Chazon Ish - Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, who lived in a small room in Bnei Brak and guided the rebuilding of Torah life in Eretz Yisrael after the war.
• Rav Moshe Feinstein - The posek of America - a rosh yeshivah on the Lower East Side whose Igros Moshe answered the questions of a new world with the Torah of the old one.
• Rav Ovadia Yosef - Who worked to restore the psak of Maran the Beis Yosef for Sephardic Jewry, and taught Torah to hundreds of thousands who had never had a rebbi.
• The Lubavitcher Rebbe - Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who sent shluchim to every corner of the world so that no Yid anywhere would be out of reach.

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