3 Responses

1. Who exactly is the Kopishnitzer Rebbe these days? I’m sure you don’t mean Itcha Meir Heschel, or his brother Zisha? (Both are old friends of mine.) I have heard that the Rebbe Reb Moshe Kopishnizter Zt”ls grand-nephew of some sort is called by some the Kopishnitzer Rebbe, but I don’t know who he is, and I don’t think I have ever met him, even though my father blew Shofar there on Rosh Hashonoh for probably two decades. Can anyone enlighten me?

2. He is somehow related, but was not in line to be Rebbe. His last name is “Flintenstein”. The Kapishnitzer Rebbe – Reb Moshe Heschel zt”l died when all his kids were very young – 10 years old and younger. Not long after that, when the Rebbe’s sons, the Heschel boys, were only children and could not yet be Rebbe, Reb Flintenstein became “The Kapishnitzer Rebbe of Yerushalayim.” The “Of Yerushalyim” was added in order to make a distinction of some sort between America and Eretz Yisroel.

3. So here in America, is Itcha Meir officially the Kopishnitzer Rebbe? By the way, I remember well the family (at least the boys) when the Rebbe z”l was niftar. I was around 13 years old when he was niftar. I have known the family for a long time. I even remember the Rebbe Reb Avrahaom Yeshoshua, z”l. I was quite young then, but I remember him. I still remembert he time when I was around 7 or so, when I had apparently done something wrong, and the Rebbe (Reb Moshe zt”l) opened the curtain to the window in his private daavening room and shook his finger at me in remonstration. I almost shriveled from fear, and I think I’ll never forget that moment, though along with the chills I now laugh about it, especially at how amused the entire shul was at the incident. I wonder what it was I did. I can’t recall.