Yisroel Salanter - Personality and Character

Personality and Character

Rabbi Lipkin was unique and his views were not always in the mainstream. He was careful to always comply with the law, even where this was discrimantory against Jews. For example, in order to be able to legally travel outside of the Pale of Settlement he became a master dye-maker and, as such, received a permit allowing him free travel within Russia.

He had an outreach philosophy and was the first major East European rabbi to move to Western Europe where religious standards were generally lower.

When the Ukase, making military service obligatory, appeared, he wrote an appeal to the rabbis and community leaders urging them to keep lists of recruits, so as to leave no pretext for the contention that the Jews shirked such service. Notwithstanding this fact, he fought vigorously through political connections in St Petersburg for the nullification of the Cantonist Decree and commented to his disciples that the day that the decree was annulled (26 August 1856) should be declared a Yom Tov. He was considered one of the most eminent Orthodox rabbis of the nineteenth century because of his broad Talmudic scholarship, and his deep piety.