Iconic Williamsburg: Rav Yosef Horowitz-Sternfeld, Zamoshter Rov

Williamsburg in the postwar era was home to a sizable population of Holocaust survivors. While the majority of them hailed from Hungary, many came from Poland as well. 

The Zamoshter Rov, Rav Yosef Horowitz-Sternfeld, came from a long line of rabbonim—tracing his lineage from father to son all the way to the holy Chozeh of Lublin. He was a ga’on and masmid who spent his days learning Torah in Williamsburg of yore. 

Rav Yosef married the daughter of Rav Yechiel Michel Roitblatt of Mezerichka, a hamlet in Ukraine. The Roitblatt’s hailed from generations of Rabbonim, and boasted tremendous yichus, including being descended the Ba’al Shem Tov, the maggid of Mezrich, and Reb Yechiel Michel of Zlochev, zy”a. The bubbe would call Rav Shlomke Zviller ‘der feter Reb Shloimke.” This was due to his being ben achar ben from the Zlochiver maggid, and thus they were related.

He learned with his children under the Bolsheviks, and continued his activities in spreading Yiddishkeit. “He was very strong-willed, and would not cease his activities,” relates a grandson. One day, a young man came to him and informed him that the Communists were about to arrest him for counter-revolutionary activity. This was around 1937, and he escaped, with just his tallis and tefillin, eastward to Georgia. 

There was a Lubavitcher yeshiva there, and he would sit and learn with the bachurim day and night. The bachurim would approach him constantly to ask him in learning. There were people that came out of Georgia many years later, and came to visit Rav Horowitz, whom they held in great esteem. A few years passed, and he sent word that he was lonely, and his daughter came to be with him. In 1941, when Russia attacked, the Rebbetzin joined him along with the two boys, and this is how their lives were saved (Many years later, a grandchild came to Emelchin, and was told that all the Jews of thew town were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, ym”sh). 

Williamsburg 

Following some time in the D.P. Camps, the Horowitz’s settled in Williamsburg, on Hewes Street, directly opposite the Sigheter shtiebel. The shul was then led by Rav Moshe Teitelbaum, later known as the Beirach Moshe of Satmar, and this is where Rav Yosef would daven for the coming two decades of his life. 

He was held in deep esteem by the mispalelim there. When the rov would leave the shul for a Shabbos, he would leave instructions for the Zamoshter Rov to say Torah. When he ultimately departed for Boro Park, and his son, Rav Aaron, shlit”a, had not yet assumed the leadership of the shul, the Zamoshter Rov was the “sheiner Yid” and the unofficial rov of the shul. 

“The mispalelim loved him, and looked to him as a demus of an ehrliche, eidele Yid,” recalls a mispalel of the shul since childhood. “We would bring him erev Pesach matzos, and he would receive the coveted aliya of shishi when the rov was not here.” 

He was a tremendous talmid chochom, and a great masmid, as was his son R’ Chaskel. “We were always in and out of the home,” recalls a grandson. “Our zeide would always learn with us, as would our uncle Chaskel, who was an extremely chashuve person and a yerei cheit. He was a derhoibener Yid, and aside from his greatness in learning, he was also an intellect. He taught himself English, and he would read the New York Times with an English-Russian dictionary at his side,” a grandson remembers. 

Rav Horowitz was known in Williamsburg for his spodik and for being a Lubliner Einikel. He would frequent the tish of the Satmar Rebbe, the Divrei Yoel, who accorded him great honor, and would say to him: “My zeide was mechabed your zeide (his ancestor, the Yismach Moshe was a talmid of the Chozeh), therefore I must give you honor as well.”

Rav Yosef’s yohrtzeit falls this month: he was niftar on the 19th of Cheshvan of the year 1974 and was interred on Har Hazeisim, leaving behind a beautiful Torah family and an incredible legacy.