Dęblin sits where the Vistula makes the land practical. Modzitz turned one of its boroughs, Modrzyce, into a dynastic name and then made the name famous far beyond the river.
Yisrael Taub settled in Modrzyce in 1891 and became known as the Modzitzer Rebbe. His court loved melody so much that it treated nigun as a primary form of devotion.
A borough becomes a rebbe name
Modrzyce was only one borough of Dęblin, but its Yiddish form, Modzitz, became the title the dynasty carried out into the world. A small riverside neighbourhood lent its name to a court known across Poland.
The address shrank to a single word, and the word travelled.
Yisrael Taub settles in Modrzyce
In 1891 Yisrael Taub settled in Modrzyce near Dęblin and became the Modzitzer Rebbe. The dynasty took its public name from that borough and made melody central to its identity.
YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern EuropeMelody as inheritance
The line was shattered by the war, but not broken. The Modzitzer rebbes rebuilt in Bnei Brak and Brooklyn, carrying the Dęblin name as a musical memory rather than a postal address.
The tune is the town's afterlife.
The tune is the town's afterlife.The town's afterlife
The line survives war and exile
Yisrael Taub died in 1920, Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub fled the Nazis in 1939 and rebuilt in exile, and the dynasty reappeared in Brooklyn. The town stayed in the name even when the people moved.
YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern EuropeWhat Dęblin still hears
The town itself was wounded badly in the Holocaust, but the Modzitz melody line kept the name audible. That is a form of survival that does not always get enough credit.
The tune still knows where it came from.
