Yisroel Hager

Yisroel Hager was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv

Hager was born in Tel Aviv in 1945 to Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager and Leah Esther. His parents had escaped the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania and reached Haifa by sea in 1944. He grew up in the court of his grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Meir Hager, first in Tel Aviv and later in Kiryat Vizhnitz in Bnei Brak.

He studied at the Vizhnitz yeshiva, where his teachers included Rabbi Nissim Karelitz. In 1963 he married Sarah Chaya Chana Twersky, daughter of Rabbi Meshulam Zusia Twersky of the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty. The couple have 8 children.

His grandfather appointed him rabbi of the Vizhnitz synagogue in central Bnei Brak. In 1972, after his grandfather died and his father became Grand Rabbi, he became rabbi of Kiryat Vizhnitz and also served as a judge in its rabbinical court.

In 1984 his father removed him from his post and his home in the neighborhood, and in 1990 named his younger brother Menachem Mendel in his place. After Hager was badly hurt in a car accident in 2000, his father visited him and the two reconciled. In 2002 his father restored him to his central role, and the Hasidic community split into 2 camps.

During his father's illness he led the community in practice. When his father died in 2012, he became Grand Rabbi, and most of the followers chose him. In 2020 he appointed his son Chaim Meir as his deputy in Bnei Brak.