Tag #153851 - Interview #94293 (Nikolai Mesko Salamonovic)

There was a very important rabbi in town, Shapira. I remember him only foggily. He was of medium build, and wore a big beard and payes. He was a very educated and broad-minded person. He behaved elegantly and expressed himself with dignity. Even we children led conversations with him. Goodness shone from him. He was a great man. As they say: “He was the right hand of God. In the same way that Moshe was the successor in the interpretation of the Torah – so was rabbi Shapira also his successor.” [...from Moshe to Moshe, no one achieved what Moshe did!” – this well-known sentence originally characterized the noted rabbi Maimonides (1135 – 1204). People used these exact words to describe another Moshe – Moshe Schreiber, or Chatam Sofer (1762 – 1839), a rabbi from Pressburg (Bratislava). This means that Jews compared rabbi Shapira (1872 – 1937) to these two giants of world Jewry – Editor’s note]. That’s how much people respected him, he was widely liked. You could never have heard one loud word from him. He prayed beautifully, people respected him. When there was a conflict between Jews, people turned only to him.