The Meltzer Family

At the Origins of the Name, the Workshop and the Grain

The surname Meltzer is a Jewish Ashkenazi occupational name, derived from the Yiddish meltser or the German Malzer, meaning "maltster" — one who prepared malt destined for beer brewing or the distillation of spirits; this expertise was essential in medieval European communities, where maltsters soaked, sprouted, and then dried grains, generally barley [names.org].

This humble genesis reveals something profound about the condition of Jews in Eastern Europe. Occupational surnames — the maltster, the tailor, the blacksmith, the peddler — betray a society in which Jews occupied a precise place in the economy of small towns, the shtetlekh, often at the crossroads of Christian agriculture and commerce. Malt, the raw material of beer and spirits, placed the meltser at the heart of a local economic chain: he bought barley from peasants, transformed it, and supplied brewers and distillers. In many villages of Lithuania and Poland, the leasing of taverns and the manufacture of alcohol counted among the few trades open to Jews, and the craft of malting was its upstream sector.

The assignment of family names to Jews of the Russian Empire was, in large part, an administrative act imposed at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The fact that a family adopted — or received — the name of its maltster trade signals an ancient and stable inscription in the economic fabric of a locality. It is likely that the Meltzers of Mir practiced, for at least one generation, this craft before it became their hereditary name.

It is here that the first of the virtues of this lineage is born, discreet yet foundational: the dignity of labor. The Jewish tradition, since the Pirqé Avot which enjoin love of work, holds honest craft as the foundation of upright existence. The meltser who transformed grain participated in this economy of the licit, the permitted (heter), where livelihood had to be reconciled with the Law — respect for prohibitions, honesty of weights and measures, probity toward peasant and buyer alike. That the most illustrious lineage of twentieth-century Lithuanian Talmudists bears the name of a craftsman of barley is not a matter of indifference: it is the sign that holiness, in the Ashkenazi conception, does not descend from on high but rises, through study, from the most modest of workshops toward the highest of academies.

The Meltzer lineage that the archives preserve takes shape in the city of Mir. Rabbi Meltzer was born on the 5th of Adar 5630 — that is, February 6, 1870 — in the city of Mir, in the Minsk governorate of the Russian Empire, today in the Republic of Belarus, to Rabbi Baruch Peretz and Miriam Reisel Meltzer [Find a Grave] [Wikipedia]. His father, Baruch Peretz, was himself a rabbi [JewAge].

Mir was no ordinary town. It housed one of the most renowned yeshivot of the Lithuanian world, the Mir Yeshiva, a center of Talmudic study whose influence would extend far beyond the borders of the Empire. To grow up in Mir, for a gifted child, was to grow up at the source. From the age of ten, he began to study under Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Baslianski, the rabbi of Mir, author of the Malbushei Yom Tov, who raised him in his home; he subsequently studied at the Mir yeshiva [Wikipedia].

This biographical detail — a child taken in and raised in the house of the town's rabbi — illuminates a dark strand of family memory. He was the youngest of nine children who died in infancy, with only one surviving sister [Wikipedia]. Behind the later glory of this house lies first the repeated mourning of a couple, the fragility of Jewish life in the shtetl where infant mortality claimed entire families. The Meltzer lineage thus exemplifies a virtue that the tradition of Israel has carried through tears as much as through joy: the perseverance of transmission despite loss. From a sibling group laid to rest survived only one son — and through him, an entire dynasty of Torah.

The welcome of young Isser Zalman into the house of the rabbi of Mir manifests, conversely, another cardinal virtue: care for the child, the hospitality of learning. To take a child into one's home to raise him in the Law was to fulfill the Talmudic ideal according to which teaching Torah to another's child is equivalent to begetting him. Thus, even before the Meltzer lineage would shine forth, it itself benefited from the kindness of a master — a debt it would later repay a hundredfold, by training hundreds of disciples.

The young man's trajectory thus traced the map of the great centers of Lithuanian Judaism. At fourteen, in 1884, he began his studies at the yeshiva of Volozhin, under the direction of the Netziv and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, where he studied for seven years [Wikipedia]. Volozhin, "the mother of yeshivot," was the academy founded by a disciple of the Gaon of Vilna; to study there meant to enter the most prestigious intellectual lineage of the Ashkenazi world.

Born in Lithuania, Meltzer studied at Volozhin under Chaim Soloveitchik and Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, and later under the Hafetz Hayim at Radin; all exercised profound influence upon him: Soloveitchik through his Talmudic method, Berlin through his love of the Land of Israel, and the Hafetz Hayim through his humility and ethical approach [Encyclopedia.com] [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. This triple imprint alone defined the character of the man and of the lineage: the analytical rigor of the Brisk method, attachment to Zion, and above all the humility (anavah) received from the Hafetz Hayim. Individual humility — that virtue which tradition places at its summit, remembering that Moses was "the most humble of men" — became the distinctive mark of Isser Zalman Meltzer, to the point that his contemporaries cited it as his dominant trait.

These years were also those of early engagement in the Jewish national cause. While studying at the yeshiva, he became involved in the secret Orthodox society Ness Ziona, which belonged to the movement of the Lovers of Zion (Hovevei Zion) [Wikipedia]. This adherence, in a future master of the Orthodox world, speaks to the depth of his love of the Land of Israel, inherited from the Netziv, and already foreshadows the emigration that would crown his life.

The matrimonial alliance sealed his entry into the Lithuanian scholarly aristocracy. In 1892, he married Beila Hinda, daughter of R. Faivel Frank of Ilukste; his wife possessed considerable scholarly capacities and throughout her life assisted him in the transcription of his works and their preparation for publication [Encyclopedia.com] [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. This precision deserves to be underscored: in a lineage of masters, the written work that made the glory of the Meltzer name owes much to a learned woman. Jewish tradition, often sparing in memory for the wives of great rabbis, here retains that the monument of the Even HaEzel was also the work of a patient feminine hand. A member of the Haganah, Tuvia Preschel, who visited him, testified that his wife, who edited his books and recorded his conversations, remained occupied [Wikipedia].

The two men, Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer and Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, married daughters of Reb Shraga Frank, one of the wealthiest men of Kovno, in whose attic Rav Israël Salanter had begun to teach mussar to Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel and Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer [Geni]. Thus the Frank household, through its daughters, connected the Meltzer family to the very birth of the mussar movement, that ethical revolution which placed self-work at the center of study.

Then came the first appointment. In 1894, he was named by R. Nathan Zvi Finkel as one of the leaders of the yeshiva of Slabodka [Encyclopedia.com]. In 1894, Rabbi Melzer became maggid shiur at the yeshiva of Slabodka, alongside his brother-in-law, Rabbi Epstein [JewAge] — one of the academies where mussar and study were united in the formation of a moral elite [Katz, 2004].

The year 1897 marks a turning point. In 1897, Rabbi Meltzer left Slabodka to lead another yeshiva that had been established by the Ridvaz at Slutsk [JewAge]. In 1897, he became the head of a yeshiva for advanced students at Slutsk, where Jacob David Willowski — the Ridvaz — was the rabbi [Encyclopedia.com].

Success was immediate and considerable. Hundreds of students flocked to the yeshiva, and when Willowski emigrated to the Land of Israel in 1903, Meltzer succeeded him as rabbi of Slutsk [Encyclopedia.com]. In 1903, Rabbi Meltzer was appointed rabbi of Slutsk, a position he held for twenty years [JewAge]. He now held two offices: the spiritual direction of the yeshiva and the pastoral care of an entire community.

It is in this dual role that the moral stature of the man is revealed. Leading a flourishing yeshiva is a work of learning; guiding a community through war, revolution and persecution is a work of courage. Yet Isser Zalman Meltzer, when the trial came, unhesitatingly chose the second duty. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the yeshiva moved to Kletsk, in Poland; Meltzer, however, refused to leave his community at Slutsk, despite his suffering at the hands of the Bolsheviks, including imprisonment for teaching Torah [Jewish Virtual Library] [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

This refusal is the central act of family Memory. He could have followed his yeshiva to Poland, where safety awaited him; he remained among his own under the Soviet boot, even unto prison, for the sole crime of teaching Torah. Here is embodied a virtue that runs through all the history of Israel: the shepherd who does not abandon his flock, the rav who exposes himself rather than forsake his community. His relationship to the oppressor was not flight but faithfulness at his post. In this, Isser Zalman Meltzer joins the long line of masters who, from the destruction of the Temple to medieval persecutions, made their very presence an act of spiritual resistance.

It was at Slutsk also that was forged the alliance that would prolong the lineage through the century. After studying at Slabodka, Aharon Kotler joined his father-in-law, Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, to lead the yeshiva of Slutsk; after the First World War, the yeshiva moved from Slutsk to Kletsk [Alchetron]. Aharon Kotler became the son-in-law of Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, another great talmid hakham, and they held each other in the highest esteem [Orthodox Union]. Through this marriage, the house of Meltzer was bound to the man who would refound the world of yeshivot in America.

The love of Zion, sown at Volozhin in the heart of the young member of Ness Ziona, finally bore fruit. Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer emigrated to Palestine in 1925; he assumed the direction of the yeshiva Etz Chaim and held several positions of leadership both in the yishuv and, later, in Israel, where he supervised the growth of the emerging Torah community [Jewish History Soundbites]. In his final years, Rabbi Meltzer served as rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva Etz Chaim in Jerusalem [Find a Grave].

At the head of Etz Chaim, the oldest yeshiva in Jerusalem, he became one of the most respected voices of Orthodox Judaism in the Holy Land, arbiter of communal questions and guardian of the Lithuanian tradition transplanted onto ancestral soil. His authority rested not on brilliance nor on polemic, but on that humility received from the Hafetz Hayim which earned him the deference of all.

The work of his life bears a name that would become his own. He was the author of the Even HaEzel, rosh yeshiva of Slutsk and of Etz Chaim in Jerusalem, disciple of the Netziv, of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik and of the Hafetz Hayim [Geni]. Isser Zalman Meltzer is known by the name "Even HaEzel" — title of his commentary on the Mishné Torah of Maimonides [JewAge]. This monumental commentary on Maimonides' code represents the major contribution of the lineage to Jewish thought: an elucidation, according to the analytical method of Brisk, of the reasoning underlying Maimonidean codification. Through this work, the name of the maltster of Mir has been inscribed forever in the chain of talmudic transmission, alongside the greatest commentators of the Law.

One must measure the distance traveled: from an artisan's surname for barley workers, the Meltzer lineage produced a lasting contribution to the understanding of halakha. This is the highest accomplishment to which a Jewish house may aspire according to the scale of values of tradition — not wealth nor power, but contribution to the understanding of Torah, what the sages call hidush, the renewal of thought in faithfulness.

He died on Tuesday, November 17, 1953, the 10th of Kislev 5714, at the age of 83, exactly twenty years after his brother-in-law Rabbi Moshe Mordechai, and was buried on Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem [Find a Grave]. He rests thus in the land he had loved since his youth, on the flank of the hills of Jerusalem.

The death of a master in Jewish tradition does not close a work: it opens its transmission. Rabbi Meltzer's legacy was carried by his numerous disciples [Find a Grave], but also by a direct lineage of remarkable scholarly density.

His son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Meltzer, was chief rabbi of Rehovot and the father-in-law of Rabbi Yehuda Amital; his other son, Professor Feivel Meltzer, was a renowned linguist of Biblical Hebrew in Israel and contributor to the Da'at Miqra commentary on the Tanakh [Find a Grave]. The lineage thus unfolds in two complementary directions: communal rabbinate, with Zvi Yehuda in Rehovot, and scholarly learning applied to the sacred text, with Feivel, whose name remains attached to one of the great exegetical enterprises of modern Israel. That the lineage of the Even HaEzel gave both a decisioner, a pastor of the city and a learned philologist testifies to a broad conception of the Torah: analytical study of the Law and scientific study of the language of Scripture are held there as one and the same service.

The alliance with Yehuda Amital, one of the major masters of religious Zionism and founder of the Har Etzion yeshiva, extends through marriage the commitment to the Land of Israel that already animated the young member of Ness Ziona. What the grandfather had sown in a clandestine society at Volozhin flourishes, two generations later, in the union of letters.

Posterity through alliances is even wider. Among his sons-in-law were Rabbi Yitzchak Ben Menachem, chief rabbi of Petah Tikva, and Rabbi Aharon Kotler, founder of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey [Find a Grave]. Aharon Kotler, son-in-law of Isser Zalman Meltzer, was to become the refonder of the world of yeshivot on American soil. He chose Lakewood, New Jersey, as the site of his new yeshiva in America, because of its remote location [Orthodox Union]. Thus the chain departing from Mir extends from Slutsk to Jerusalem, and from Kletsk to America: the same transmission, borne by the same family, transplanted across three continents through the catastrophes of the twentieth century.

Finally, in the genealogical documents, we note the names of children bearing the surname: Hana Perel Kotler, née Meltzer, Shraga Feivel Meltzer, Zvi Yehuda Meltzer, Sarah bat Menahem, née Meltzer [Geni]. The daughter Hana Perel, wife of Aharon Kotler, embodies this constant trait of the lineage: the Meltzer women, like their mother Beila Hinda before them, were the living link between the great houses of Jewish learning.

In embodying this continuity — involvement in the collective life of Israel, patient reconstruction of institutions of study after each destruction —, the Meltzer lineage participates in the most tenacious virtue of Jewish Memory: the refusal to let the lamp of study be extinguished, whether under the Russian Empire, the Soviet revolution, or exile.

What is to be retained, at the end of this journey, from the Meltzer lineage? A craftsman's name that became a master's name. A family born of barley and malt, which gave to the world of Torah one of the most respected commentators on Maimonides, a dynasty of rabbis, a philologist of biblical Hebrew, and — through its alliances — the refounders of yeshivot in the Land of Israel as in America.

Of all the virtues that this house embodied — the dignity of labor at its origin, the love of Zion sown at Volozhin, the pastoral faithfulness of a rabbi who preferred Soviet prison to the abandonment of his community, the lasting contribution to halakhic thought through the Even HaEzel —, one alone dominates and binds them all together: humility. Received from the Hafetz Hayim, this anavah was the imprint that contemporaries unanimously recognized in Isser Zalman Meltzer. It explains how a man of such great learning could, without fanfare, govern academies, guide communities and write a major work, while remaining, even in the description given of his household, a simple man surrounded by a wife who patiently recorded his words.

This humility is not a modesty of circumstance: it is, in the tradition of Israel, the very condition of true knowledge, that which collective memory attributes to Moses and which Lithuanian mussar placed at the heart of its pedagogy. In embodying it, the Meltzer lineage will have best expressed this truth that Judaism has carried since Sinai: that greatness is measured by the effacement of self before the Law, and that the most modest of names — that of a maltster bent over his grains — can, through study and righteousness, become a name blessed from generation to generation.