Rabbi Miyrom Hillel Rappaport
מארים הלל ב"ר אפרים
Bialystoker Shtut Maggid (Town Preacher)Date of Death:
Sun. May 5, 1963 -
Iyaar 11 5723
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Directions to Kever: Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens maintains computerized records and will provide a detailed location map upon request. Location: Section: United Hebrew Community, along Carmel Avenue, between North 9 and North 10th Street. Near the kever of Rav Velvel Margolis
Name Listed on Cemetery Database: RAPPAPORT, MYRON (RABBI)
Biographical Notes:
Photo Caption: Rabbi Miyrom Hillel Rappaport (c. 1942) at a wedding in Washington Heights, New York City, Credit: From the library of Sarah Payes
Credit: Shmuel Amsel, Brooklyn, NY
Credit: Shmuel Amsel, Brooklyn, NY
Credit: Shmuel Amsel, Brooklyn, NY
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Was he a Kohen ?
no he was a yisrael. in fact he is one of the very few rappaports that are NOT cohanim
Hi Sally,
Very intresting, was there a reason why the family carried the name Rappaport, such as were the married into the Cohanim Rappaort Family, etc.?
Any othher bio infor would be intresting, was he a Maggid-Preacher in the Lithuanian city of Biyalstok or in a comunity here in the US with that name?
In the Degel Yisroel journal (v2.4 Nisan/Iyar 5688 / April 1928 – p.6 in the article titled “Rabbinishe Nayes” – viewable at http://www.hebrewbooks.org/13154) it says that the Bialystoker shtot maggid, R.M.H. Rappaport, recently came to the USA with his family after being the town maggid of Bialystok for 14 years.
Rav Rappoport did seem to also have a general connection to the Bialystoker shul in the Lower East Side of New York once he came to the USA. I have seen two instances where he gave hespedim at that shul (one for the Meitsheter Ilui in 1928 as reported in different article in Degel Yisroel and one for my great-grandfather in 1931 as reported in Der Morgen Journal)
There are a few images of Rav Rappaport in a yizkor book on Bialystok that was published in 1951. The book can be viewed at http://yizkor.nypl.org/index.php?id=2976. See images 85, 261 and 281 which will direct you to pages 79, 255 and 275 of the book.
According to http://pages.cthome.net/hirsch/bhh.htm, he became a rav in New Haven, CT in 1930.
On page 64 of a book called Ner l’Yisroel (by noted rabbinic biographer R. Aharon Sorasky, 1997) it says that Efraim Rappaport from Brisk had 4 sons:
Pinchas; “Alter” also known as the Bialystoker shtot magid (interesting that doesn’t mention his name as Myrim Hillel here); Yaakov Tuvia; Eliyahu
And three daughters: Devora; Sarah; Chaya Raizel
Ner l’Yisroel is a biography of the Bialystoker magid’s nephew, Yisroel Dov Rappaport. Both Yisroel Dov and his father Yaakov Tuvia were staunch Slonimer chassidim. R. Yaakov Tuvia was at one point the head shochet in Minsk and was an expert on hilchos shechita and treifos.
Interestingly enough, the Bialystoker magid’s son, Rav H.Z. Rappaport was a rav in Kingston, NY and authored a sefer on hilchos treifos (as can be seen at http://www.hebrewbooks.org/4141). The sefer is called Ohr l’Yoreh Deah. “Ohr” is after his recently deceased father Myrim (a Yiddish nickname for Meir).
Also interesting is the mention in the hakdama there that says his father was niftar on 4 Iyar, while the matzeiva above says says 11 Iyar.
Also see
http://www.neveh.org/price/pricetrs.html – where R. Schwadron is quoted in “Around the Maggid’s Table” where he cites a story from the Bialystoker maggid.
Sally – if you can, please contact me at eskolskyinfo@yahoo.com. I would be interested in finding out more about your grandfather since he was one of the rabbanim
who were maspid my great-grandfather, R. Yaakov Eskolsky at his levaya as I mentioned earlier.
Hi – I came across this site when doing a genealogic search. Some of my Rappaport ancestors are mentioned here; my father’s paternal grandfather was the Pinchas Rappaport mentioned here (for what it’s worth, I have his brother’s name as Alter Marem Hillel). Could you tell me more about what “shtot maggid” means, and perhaps some of the other terms (I’m from the secular branch of that family).
Translation of “shtot maggid” would be “city preacher”,
but that is far off of the definition.
i am his great-great-great nephew
A few notes. Could kever name be Morris, with the engraver confused by samekh/final mem. Regardless, Meir and fem. Mir’l are very common among Slonimer and Slonimer-Bialystocker. Also, the name Katz/Kass/Kassovsky by Leviim – possibly analogous to this use of Rappaport. My GGGF, the rav of the Slonimer q’hil’e in Bialystock, was a “Kassovsky” – and a Layvy. Some of his children came to the US before 1900. Kol tov.
1) No mistake on kever. Back then מארים was a fairly common nickname for מאיר. We have that name in my own family.
2) I just noticed the following page which contains a bio on the Bialystoker maggid and links to a sound recording of him giving a speech at a wedding or sheva brachos in the mid-late 1940s:
http://digital.library.yu.edu/bialystoker-maggid
Thanks Moshe for the speech link, it is great!
I was just alerted to this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/370848212155
where the שער of ספר מחזה עינים has a stamp of its owner Rav Rappaport.
I have saved an image of just the stamp over here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=pictures+of+rabbanim&psc=G&filter=1#5897156489532081010
The text of the stamp isn’t so clear but it reads:
מארים הלל
דמתקרי אלטר בר’ אפרים
ראפאפארט
מגיד דמתא ביאליסטאק
So this is another piece of evidence that the rav’s given name was Marim Hillel and that his nickname was Alter.
BTW – a different (digitized) copy of that sefer is here:
http://www.hebrewbooks.org/33282
Sorry – the correct link for the image is:
https://plus.google.com/photos/108906786730490821956/albums/5723088551114609553/5897156489532081010?banner=pwa&pid=5897156489532081010&oid=108906786730490821956
See the following for a picture of the Bialystoker Magid while attending a ground breaking for the Kletzk yeshiva in 1927:
http://www.kletsk.org/YizkorBookPhotos/images/2.jpg
According to the following, Rabbi Rappaport is marked as yud-daled (14) within the picture – 3 seats to the left of Rav Aharon Kotler (alef):
http://www.kletsk.org/YizkorBookPhotos/Plate2.i.html
Hi Florence.
My fathers Paternal grandfather was R’Yaakov Tuvia Rapoport, brother to , Pinchas, Eliyahu and Alter M Hllel Rapoport.
I wouyld like to speak to you.
Plz contact me at yrapopor@syr.edu
Moshe,
The Kletzk photo, in a sharp version:
http://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?p=480022#p480022
YD, thanks!
If you look closely, they are actually two different photos of the same scene and with two different numbering systems of the same style of letters.
The black & white photo is just about as sharp as the sepia tone photo but is more cropped on the sides and has less of the original photo. It looks like B&W was published in the Kletzk yizkor book and the sepia tone was published somewhere else.
I have combined the two photos for comparison at the following link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nDd8orbCuvHetM4V6
Hi was my grandmother’s brother and I also have his foto
I recently received very old images of Rav Marim Hillel ( https://tinyurl.com/4955jsct ) and his father Rav Efraim Rapoport ( https://tinyurl.com/ypyf43nd ) from the “Nonna” who posted the comment above. They are courtesy of Nonna Lukin ( nonna.lukin@gmail.com ) of Yerushalayim who is a granddaughter of the Bialystoker Magid’s sister Chaya Raizel Gevirtsman.
I have also posted this to the Hebrew language discussion thread that was started for the Bialystoker Magid in 2012 – see https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?t=11889
Corrections/updates to some URLs I posted here many years ago – they have been archived at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20101205132437/http://pages.cthome.net/hirsch/bhh.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20160612044454/http://www.neveh.org/price/pricetrs.html