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| The Burial place of R. Yitzchak Kalisz in Warka, Poland. |
Introduction
R. Yitzchak Kalisz of Warka (or Vorka) (1779-1848) was a friend of the Kotzker Rebbe. Unlike his friend, though, he rose quickly among the ranks of political activists and became the official representative, not just of Chassidim, but of all Polish Jewry in the early nineteenth century.
This article – based extensively on the research by Professor Marcin Wodzinski[1] − deals with how the Chassidic Rebbe, R. Yitzchak Warka (a student of R. Simcha Bunim of Przysucha) suddenly found himself regarded as the most influential Jewish representative in Poland. In those days, Jewish communal affairs and politics were known as ‘shtadlanut.’ From the mid-1830s, Polish ‘shtatlanut’ was dominated by R. Yitzchak Warka and his hometown, Warka, was regarded as the Chassidic capital of Poland.
