Nadene Goldfoot
Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak HaLevi Horowitz (1745-1815) – known as the Hozeh(Seer) of Lublin – was one of the famed hasidic masters who has captured the imagination. Hasidic collective memory remembers the Hozeh for his miraculous ability to look at a person’s face, peering deep into the soul and perceiving that person’s innermost struggles. Hasidic lore recounts his dramatic demise after mysteriously falling out of the window on Simhat Torah 1814. He was injured in a fall from a window on Simchat Torah night, following the ritual hakafos dancing, and died almost a year later on Tisha B'av (August 15, 1815) from injuries relating to this fall. He is buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery, Lublin. His great grandson was Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczna. During his stay in Lublin, Horowitz was opposed by a prominent mitnaged rabbi, Azriel Horowitz. He established his synagogue there at Szeroka 28 in the Jewish Quarter of Lublin. Even after Horowitz's death the synagogue remained the heart and soul for the scholars of the city.
Horowitz was a descendant of Isaiah Horowitz, a prominent rabbi and mystic, and his maternal grandfather, Yaakov Koppel Likover, also a prominent rabbi and scholar, as well as a contemporary of the Ba'al Shem Tov.
The Hozeh’s mark has been indelible. His many disciples and their students should be credited with the emergence and flourishing of Hasidism in Poland during the nineteenth century – one of the golden periods of the movement. Chelm was originally said to be a Polish town. Jews lived there since the 15th century; at least after the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. It was destroyed during the Cossack massacres of 1648 but later was re-founded. The community numbered 7,615 before World War II.
Even today, the Hasidic group with the greatest political clout in Israel, Gur, traces its spiritual origins back to the Hozeh.
My Jewish Encyclopedia lists a Jacob Isaac as the Rabbi of Lublin who also died in 1815 and was a Hasidic rabbi (same person as Yaakov). He was originally from Galicia and then moved to Lublin in about 1800".
It happens that some Germans were moved to Lublin, Russia's town of Chelm, center of Jewish folklore containing the fools. Many Jews happened to also live here. At the beginning of September 1939, Chełm was occupied by Nazi Germany, but on 25 September, the Germans withdrew in advance of Soviet forces. The Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement stipulated that Chełm should be under German control, and on 9 October the city was ceded back to Nazi Germany. During their brief period in Chełm, the Soviet authorities established a civil government under a Jewish major, who was a Soviet sympathizer. Fearing reprisals from the Polish residents in Chełm, hundreds of Jews fled together with the retreating Red Army. Immediately following the German occupation, the Jews who remained in Chełm were attacked and brutalized, in part because of their central role during the Communist occupation. Some escaped to Russia in 1939 when Germany entered Poland. The remainder, Jews, were killed by the Nazis.
"Jacob's saintliness was legendary and the Hasidim believed him to be possessed of the Holy Spirit, calling him Ha-Hozeh ("The Seer"). Jacob wrote works on the Bible and emphasized the importance of the tzaddik".
The naive inhabitants of Chelm figure in many anecdotes of Jewish folk-humor. Because Jews have lived among so many and varied peoples with diverse culture, their humor has had a rich and versatile foundation and has enjoyed and continual stream of influences.
Reference:
Book: The Enneagram and Kabbalah; Reading Your Soul by Rabbi Howard A. Addison; p.vii
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://elmad.pardes.org/history/early-hasidic-era/2018/11/the-tisch-disentangling-facts-from-myth/
https://www.yadvashem.org/communities/chelm/german-occupation.html
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