This Day in History – 26 Tishrei/September 30

26 Tishrei

5577/1816, Harav Aharon of Zhitomir, zt”l, mechaber of Toldos Aharon

5587/1826, Harav Asher of Stolin, zt”l, son of Harav Aharon Hagadol of Karlin

5694/1933, Harav Dovid Shapiro, zt”l, of Sonik-Dinov

5758/1997

Harav Dovid Mattisyahu Rabinowitz, zt”l, the Biala Rebbe of Bnei Brak

Harav Dovid Mattisyahu Rabinowitz was born in Shedlitz, Poland, on Erev Chanukah 5689/1928. His father was Harav Yechiel Yehoshua, later Rebbe of Biala. The child was named Dovid after his great-grandfather, Harav Nosson Dovid of Shidlovtza, and Mattisyahu was added since his bris was on the seventh day of Chanukah.

As a small child, he woke up early to learn Torah, and he davened with fiery intent.

During the difficult years of the war, his father was exiled to Russia. Young Dovid Mattisyahu, along with two of his brothers and his sister, escaped to Tehran, Iran. The children came to Eretz Yisrael on the transport known as Yaldei Tehran, “the children of Tehran.”

When Harav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the Ponevezher Rav, heard that the children of the Biala Rebbe had come to Eretz Yisrael, he made a special effort to arrange placements for them that would ensure they would lead Torah lives. Dovid Mattisyahu went to the Ponevezh Yeshivah, where he was noted for his constant learning and his warm tefillos; he was often asked to lead the tefillos on Yamim Tovim.

Dovid Mattisyahu got married and later received semichah from Harav Yosef Tzvi Kalish of Skernevitz, the Rav of Bnei Brak, a scion of the Vorka dynasty.

Harav Yechiel Yehoshua arrived in Eretz Yisrael in 5707/1947 and was reunited with his children. He began rebuilding the Biala dynasty after the Holocaust.

After the petirah of his father on 21 Shevat 5742/1982, Reb Dovid Mattisyahu founded his court in Bnei Brak, where he spread Torah and Chassidus with passion and fire. He had great dveikus in tefillah and avodah.

Reb Dovid Mattisyahu spent one Shabbos every year, during the Three Weeks, in the Old City of Yerushalayim, near the Kosel.

He was niftar on 25 Tishrei 5758/1997 at the age of 69.

His sons, ybl”c, are Harav Yaakov Menachem, the Biala Rebbe in Bnei Brak; Harav Shmuel Yair, who serves as Rav in his brother’s beis medrash in Bnei Brak; Harav Avraham Yerachmiel, the Rebbe of Ostrova-Biala in Yerushalayim; Harav Yirmiyahu, the Rebbe of Biala-Lentchna in Beit Shemesh; and Harav Aharon Shlomo Chaim Elazar, the Biala Rebbe in Boro Park.

His sons-in-law are Harav Yehudah Zev Volf Kornreich, the Shidlovtza Rebbe in Yerushalayim, and Harav Yaakov Hager, son of the Seret-Vizhnitzer Rebbe, shlita.

Some of Reb Dovid Mattisyahu’s divrei Torah were published with the titles Orchos Dovid and Lahavas Dovid.

Zechuso yagen aleinu.

September 30

In 1938, after co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain praised the accord on his return home, saying, “I believe it is peace for our time.”

In 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev forced President Andrei A. Gromyko to retire from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a Kremlin shake-up.

In 1999, Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered a top-level investigation of accounts of mass killings of Korean civilians by U.S. soldiers at No Gun Ri in 1950.

In 2004, President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry met at the University of Miami for their first debate, with Kerry accusing Bush of a “colossal error in judgment” in ordering the invasion of Iraq and the president noting that Kerry had voted to authorize the military action.