Baruch Ashlag

Baruch Ashlag was born in 1907 in Warsaw

Ashlag was born in Warsaw on January 22, 1907, the firstborn son of the kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, author of the Sulam commentary on the Zohar. As a child he began studying Kabbalah and joined his father on trips to the Rabbi of Porisov and the Rabbi of Belz. In 1921 he moved with his family to the Land of Israel.

He continued his studies at the Torat Emet institution and was later ordained as a rabbi. For most of his life he chose not to earn a living from Torah and worked at road building, construction and clerical jobs. He studied with his father for many years, recorded his teachings in notebooks, and taught in his place when his father fell ill.

After his father's death he led the Ashlag Hasidim. Disputes over the rights to publish the Zohar with the Sulam commentary led him to leave Israel for 3 years, mostly in the United Kingdom, where he taught Kabbalah in Gateshead and other cities. From the late 1960s he taught Kabbalah to wider circles in places such as Hebron, Tiberias and Jerusalem.

In 1976 he expanded his study hall in Bnei Brak into a large synagogue. In 1983 a group of new students joined him, and he began writing essays on spiritual growth and work in a group. From 1984 he wrote a weekly article, later collected by his students as Shlavey ha Sulam.

His wife died in 1990, and he later remarried Feiga Lunz. He died on September 13, 1991, and was buried on Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem. The settlement of Brukhin in Samaria is named after him.