Chaim Brody. Memorial Prayer for R. Israel Meir Kagan

It may surprise us to find that the decidedly modernist researcher of Hebrew poetry, Chaim (or Heinrich) Brody (1868-1942) should compose an elegy on the passing of the ultra orthodox Rabbi - Israel Meir Hakohen, known by the title of his book as the “Chofetz Chaim.” This may be testimony to the fact that the Chofetz Chaim was universally revered by all segments of Jewry as the “tzaddik ha-dor” (righteous man of the generation), or it may simply reflect the little known fact that Brody was the grandson of the Hungarian authority Rabbi Solomon Ganzfried (author of “Kitzur Shulchan Aruch”) and studied in his youth in the Pressburg (Bratislava) Yeshiva. EJ, Vol. IV, cols. 1399-1400