Youth
He was the son of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Bengis, the Rabbi of the Russian Empire (now Lithuanian) town of Šnipiškės (now a neighborhood of Vilna) and his wife Shayna, the granddaughter of Rabbi Aaron Brody, dayan of Vilna. Rabbi Zelig Reuven was soon known as "the Shnipishoker illui" (prodigy). When he was 17 years old, he went to learn in the Volozhin yeshiva under the Netziv, who called him 'the living Shas'. While learning at Valozhyn, his reputation quickly grew and he was known as an extremely sharp student and a diligent learner.
After having learned in Volozhin for several years, he married the daughter of Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Broide, Rav of the towns Nemakščiai (Nemoksht in Yiddish), Švėkšna (Shvkshna in Yiddish) and Žagarė (Zhager in Yiddish). After his marriage, he spent eight years living with his in-laws, learning all day. In 1892 he was appointed Rabbi of Boćki (Bodki), Poland, succeeding Rabbi Malkiel Tzvi Tenenbaum who took the position of Rabbi of Lomza.
Read more about this topic: Zelig Reuven Bengis
Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in. Within me is no disturbing interplay now, but only the steady currents of adaptation and of sympathy.”
—Haniel Long (1888–1956)
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;”
—Robert Bridges (1844–1930)