Aaron ben Asher of Karlin
Encyclopedia
Aaron Ben Asher of Karlin (June 6, 1802-June 23, 1872), known as Rabbi Aaron II of Karlin, was one of the most famous rabbis of the Ḥasidim
Hasidim
Hasidim/Chasidim is the plural of Hasid , meaning "pious". The honorific "Hasid" was frequently used as a term of exceptional respect in the Talmudic and early medieval periods. In classic Rabbinic literature it differs from "Tzadik"-"righteous", by instead denoting one who goes beyond the legal...

 in northwestern Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

.

He had an immense number of followers, and many thousands of them used to visit him annually, about the time of the Jewish New Year, as is the custom among that sect. Notwithstanding his severity of manner and the not infrequent rudeness of his behavior, he was highly esteemed by his adherents. He "reigned" in Karlin
Karlin (Pinsk)
Karlin is the name of a suburb of the city of Pinsk, Belarus. It was originally founded as an independent town in 1690 and was named after the village's founder, Jan Karol Dolski. By 1695 Dolski had built a church and a fortified manor on the spot...

, near Pinsk
Pinsk
Pinsk , a town in Belarus, in the Polesia region, traversed by the river Pripyat, at the confluence of the Strumen and Pina rivers. The region was known as the Marsh of Pinsk. It is a fertile agricultural center. It lies south-west of Minsk. The population is about 130,000...

, in the government of Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

 (currently in Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

), in succession to his father and his grandfather, Aaron ben Jacob.

A few years before his death he had a quarrel with a rich family of Karlin and removed from there to Stolin
Stolin
Stolin is a town in the Brest Voblast of Belarus. Nowadays, Stolin is the center of the largest district in Brest voblast. The population of Stolin is 12,500 people . The Belarusian-Ukrainian border is about away, so Stolin is now a border city that hosts many Ukrainians on the market days...

, a town several miles distant. Considering the amount of business that the yearly influx of strangers brought to the city where he resided, his removal was regarded as a misfortune for Karlin. He died, aged seventy years and seventeen days, in Malinovka, near Dubno
Dubno
Dubno is a city located on the Ikva River in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of Dubno Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...

, in Volhynia
Volhynia
Volhynia, Volynia, or Volyn is a historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Southern Bug River, to the north of Galicia and Podolia; the region is named for the former city of Volyn or Velyn, said to have been located on the Southern Bug River, whose name may come...

, while on a journey to the wedding of his granddaughter, and was succeeded by his son, Asher of Stolin, whose chief claim to distinction is that he spent most of his time at the miḳwah (bath). Asher died in Drohobycz about one year after the death of his father, and was succeeded by his five-year-old son, the so-called Yenuḳa (Baby) of Stolin, against whoserabbinate (in the Ḥasidic sense) Schatzkes—or, according to others, Judah Lob Levin (called Yehallel of Kiev)—under the pseudonym "Ḥad min Ḥabraya" (One of the students), wrote a well-known satire in "Ḥa-Shaḥar" (vi. 25-44).

Aaron is the author of Bet Aharon (Aaron's House; Brody, 1875), which contains his cabalistic and ethical expositions of the Pentateuch. It also contains all the extant writings of his grandfather, of his father, and of his son.

Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography

  • Walden, Shem ha-Gedolim he-Ḥadash, p. 18;
  • Ḳinat Soferim, note 1294, Lemberg, 189
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