The Sabba of Kretchnef: The Life and Death of a Minor Tzaddik

ABSTRACT:Since running across a small book of hagiography in a prayer room on the Upper West Side in the 1970s, I have been fascinated with Eliezer Ze'ev Rosenbaum, the Sabba of Kretchnef, or the Kretchnefer Zeide, who was murdered at Birkenau on the 27th of Iyyar (May 20), 1944. The Kretchnefer Zeide, while remembered, was one of many. To paraphrase Alan Nadler's estimation of R. Pinchas of Polotsk, he is paradigmatic because he was an unexceptional figure. One dimension of the Judaism practiced by rebbes such as the Kretchnefer Zeide was the need and desire to stretch the boundaries of the law's demands on him. The intensity of his kabbalistic and religious practice was the defining aspect of his rabbinical leadership, and his effect on the communities of Sighet and Kretchnef. Although he was unexceptional, in remembering the Kretchnefer Zeide through the eyes of hagiographers, the reader is reminded of the old conundrum: we exalt these figures, yet they are ever conscious of their inadequacy. Are we seeing the rebbe, or are we seeing the Hasid seeing the rebbe?