RABBI JEROME (YISROEL YIRMIYAHU) WIDISKY. A ...

RABBI JEROME (YISROEL YIRMIYAHU) WIDISKY. A notebook of his Torah thoughts and sermons.
Manuscript in Hebrew.
pp. 120. Pages brittle, some detached with loss. Unbound. 4to.

Chelsea, Mass. 1930-31.

    This notebook contains the Torah musings of Rabbi Jerome Widisky (1888-1932). In it he recorded his novellae to Talmud Tractate Berakhot, the weekly Torah reading, thoughts occasioned by different holidays, periods of the Jewish calendar, bar mitzvahs, dedications of a new Torah, and in one instance, he records his great spiritual satisfaction at a Ladies Auxiliary-sponsored concert he attended while visiting Wilkes-Barre, PA in August of 1930 to lecture at Congregation Anshei Emes. Rabbi Widisky was so moved he calls it a “concert shel mitzvah, ” and compared its power over his spirit to the music which King David played for Saul. As for the rabbi of Anshei Emes, he says that “Rabbi Cheme’d Adams” - Rabbi Hyman Adams (1898-1950) - has “extra understanding, both broad and deep.”

    Rabbi Yisrael Yirmiyahu Widisky was born in Lithuania. He studied at the Telshe Yeshiva, before moving to the United States in 1905. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he took a number of pulpits, ultimately helming Congregation Beth Aaron in Chelsea, Massachusetts. In 1926 Rabbi Widisky published a popular book called Toras Israel - Book of Hebrew Law of Knowledge, which featured a translation of excerpts from the Shulchan Aruch, as well as his original sermons, with 12-volumes projected in all.

  Widisky was also a prolific lecturer, visiting many American cities, as far west as Mississippi, and as far north as Rochester. He also touted an English translation of the entire Talmud which he purported was near completion and only in need of funds.