Yosef Zundel of Salant

Yosef Zundel of Salant (1786–1866) (also known as Zundel Salant) was an Ashkenazi rabbi and the primary teacher of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.

Zundel was born on the first day of Rosh Hashana in 1786 in Salantai, Lithuania. Little is known of his early years. He descended from Rabbi Faivush Ashkenazi of Vilna (late 17th-early 18th century) and his father was Rabbi Benyamin Beinush, who was a shochet and hazzan in Salant.

As a young man, Zundel studied in the Volozhin Yeshiva under Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. Following Rabbi Chaim's death in 1821, Zundel would make trips to study with Rabbi Akiva Eiger.

Salant's wife was Rochel Rivkah, and they had three children, two daughters, Tziviah and Heniah, and an only son, Aryeh Leib. Rabbi Yosef Zundel of Salant refused to accept any rabbinical positions. He ran a small business which produced only a meager living. He chose to spend much of his time immersed in Torah studies and musar.

Zundel provided the spiritual inspiration for his most famous student, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the founder of the Musar movement.

During the early years of the Musar movement, Reb Zundel was seen in the marketplace on Friday afternoons reminding the merchants that the Jewish Sabbath was approaching so they had time to close their stalls and avoid its desecration.

Rabbi Yosef Zundel, who was a student of the Vilna Gaon in every sense of the word, longed to settle in the Land of Israel. Finally, in 1838-39, despite the hardships of such a trip due to the ongoing war between the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, Rabbi Zundel nevertheless took his family and traveled to Jerusalem. The Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem at that time was under the leadership and financial support of the Kollel Vilna, whose headquarters were in Amsterdam. It was led by a committee under a wealthy Dutch Jewish banker, Rabbi Avraham Zvi Hirsch Lehren (1784–1853). Rabbi Lehren had, in 1817, assumed the mantle of leadership of an organization founded in 1809 known as Pekidim and Amarkalim of Eretz Yisrael ("Officials and Administrators of the Land of Israel"). This charitable organization was in charge of the collection, administration, and disbursement of all the monies collected in Western Europe on behalf of the Ashkenazi community in the Holy Land.

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