Menachem Mendel Hager

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Hager (born November 28, 1957) is one of the two Grand Rabbies of the Vizhnitz (Hasidic dynasty) Hasidic dynasty in Bnei Brak and a current member of Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (Council of great Torah Sages) of the Agudat Yisrael movement.

Rabbi Mendel was born in Israel to his parents Grand Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the previous spiritual leader of the Vizhnitzer Hassidim and to Rebbetzin Leah Esther, daughter of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Paneth of Deyzh (Hasidic dynasty) which was killed in the Holocaust and after which Rabbi Mendel was named. He is the youngest child out of six siblings. As a child he was receiving his education in the Vizhnitz educational institutions. About a year after his Bar Mitzvah he traveled to the United States to study in the Skverer Yeshiva. In 1976 he married Rebbetzin Miriam, daughter of Rabbi Avrohom Dovid Horowitz (deceased) which use to serve as a Chief Rabbi of the Ultraorhodox community in Strasbourg France and later as a member of the Edah HaChareidis in Jerusalem. Between Rabbi Mendel and his older brother Grand Rabbi Yisroel Hager there was a tension on the background of the leadership of their father's followers and over the inheritance in 1984 their father Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager banned the older brother Rabbi Yisroel from his main post as a Chief Rabbi and from the Vizhnitz community as well. In 1990, by the command of Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua, Rabbi Mendel was crowned to serve as a Chief Rabbi of The Vizhnitzer Hassidim and also was designed to become his father's heir and to take over the leadership eventually. In 2002 when the older brother Rabbi Yisroel was returned back to Vizhnitz to his post and reconciled with his father, the overwhelming majority of the Hassidim supported Rabbi Yisroel, and only few hundreds followed Rabbi Mendel which decided to separate from his father's community and to establish one of his own. In 2009 he founded his synagogue and Yeshiva in Ezra street, which is located near the Vizhnitz neighborhood. In March 2012 after his father passed away he was crowned officially as a Grand Rabbi of his community which contains approximately few hundreds families. Despite the arguments and the dispute, the two brothers maintain good relationship and attend occasionally each other's family events.

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