ר׳ יוסף רוזין

ר׳ יוסף רוזין (1858–1936), universally known as the Rogatchover Gaon, was an exceptionally original Talmudist and the Hasidic rabbi of Dvinsk. Born in Rogachev to a Kapust-Chabad family, he was sent at thirteen to Slutsk to study under ר׳ יוסף דוב הלוי סולובייצ׳יק alongside ר׳ חיים הלוי סולובייצ׳יק, and later studied in Shklov under ר׳ יהושע לייב דיסקין. In 1889 he became rabbi of Dvinsk’s Hasidic community, serving alongside the non-Hasidic communal rabbi ר׳ מאיר שמחה הכהן. His method ranged freely across the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, midrash, legal codes, and philosophical terminology, often reducing distant passages to a single abstract principle. His extraordinarily compressed responsa typically direct the reader through chains of citations rather than conventional exposition. The multivolume צפנת פענח includes commentaries on the Mishneh Torah of ר׳ משה בן מימון, Talmud, Torah, responsa, and correspondence. During the First World War he was evacuated to Petrograd and returned to Dvinsk in 1924. Illness brought him to Vienna for surgery in 1936; he died there on 5 March and was returned to Dvinsk for burial. His daughter Rachel Citron and ר׳ ישראל אלתר ספרן־פוקס later risked their lives to preserve his manuscripts on microfilm, enabling extensive posthumous publication.