Yissachar Dov Rokeach (II) - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

For most of the year, Yissachar Dov lived near his uncle in Tel Aviv and studied in the Belzer Talmud Torah there; he spent the summer months in Jerusalem, studying in the Satmar Talmud Torah.

When Rebbe Aharon died in 1957, Yissachar Dov was only nine years old. For the next nine years, Belz was effectively without an active rebbe, as Yissachor Dov, then called the "Yanuka" (Child) by his followers, was educated by a small circle of trusted advisors. A few years after Rebbe Aharon’s death, Yissachar Dov entered the Belzer yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he was given two dormitory rooms – one which he shared with other students as a sleeping room and a private room where he could study alone and with others. Every decision regarding the young boy was brought before Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Neiman, Rav of the Belzer community in Montreal and a relative of Yissachar Dov on his mother’s side.

Yissachar Dov celebrated his bar mitzvah on 25 January 1961 (8 Shevat 5721) in the Tel Aviv beit medrash of Rebbe Aharon, where he sat by himself at the dais, greeting a few hundred guests. Back in yeshiva, he studied for many hours with private chavrusas (study partners) and prepared to receive rabbinic ordination. At the age of 15, he moved to an apartment which a group of Belzer Hasidim rented for him near the yeshiva, and began inviting other students to join him for Shabbat meals at which he delivered words of Torah and Hasidut.

At the age of 16, he was engaged to Sarah Hager, daughter of Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, then rosh yeshiva and av beis din (head of the rabbinical court) of Kiryat Vizhnitz, Bnei Brak (he succeeded his father as Vizhnitzer Rebbe in 1972). The wedding was held in February 1965 in Kiryat Vizhnitz, where the couple settled after their marriage.

In June 1966, a delegation of Belzer Hasidim approached Rokeach and urged him to accept the mantle of leadership for the Belz Hasidim. Rokeach asked them to seek the opinion of other Torah leaders, whereupon they solicited the approval of the Klausenberger Rebbe and the Gerrer Rebbe. The new Rebbe was coronated in Jerusalem on 28 July 1966. Standing at the gravesite of his uncle, the previous Belzer Rav, Rokeach received his first kvitel from the Yavrover Rav, a descendant of the Belzer and Ropshitzer Rebbes, as is customary in Belz. He has led the dynasty ever since.

He and his wife have one son, Aharon Mordechai Rokeach, born on 12 October 1975. Aharon Mordechai married Sarah Leah Lemberger, daughter of Rabbi Shimon Lemberger, Makova Rebbe in Kiryat Ata, on August 3, 1993 in Kiryat Belz, Jerusalem, in the presence of 60,000 people. The couple has nine sons and three daughters. Their eldest son, Sholom, celebrated his engagement three weeks shy of his 17th birthday on 28 February 2012.