Written by Rabbi Dr. Levi Cooper (Pardes Faculty) – When the second cholera pandemic reached Prussia in 1831, Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher (1796-1874) was serving there in his first rabbinic post in Pleschen (today Pleszew, Poland), a position he had held since 1822 thanks to the initiative of his teacher, the great Talmudist and chief rabbi of Posen, Rabbi Akiva Eger (1761-1837). Guttmacher would go on to be a unique leader in the hassidic landscape. He did not come from hassidic stock and he was based in Greiditz in Prussia (Grätz in German; today Grodzisk Wielkopolski, Poland) rather than in the hassidic heartlands further east.
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