Rabbi Aryeh Folger was elected by the United Communities to serve as the rabbi of Vienna.

December 27, 2015   

21 members of the Holy Communities Committee, members of the Council of the Union of Jewish Communities in Vienna, elected Rabbi Aryeh Folger to serve as rabbi of the Austrian capital. Rabbi Folger will replace Rabbi Chaim Eisenberg, who has retired, and will continue to serve as rabbi of Austria.  Rabbi Folger will take office in preparation for Shavuot. According to the constitution, he will serve for three months as the rabbi of the Jewish community and then assume his role as the rabbi of Vienna. Upon his election, Rabbi Folger will travel to Israel to receive the blessings of the Graeil Steinmann - who sent his blessing upon his election: "May he not fail in matters of halakhic law and be pleasing to the public"; Rabbi Kanievsky, who sent his blessing for "blessings and success"; great rebbes, and heads of yeshiva. Upon his election to serve as the rabbi of Vienna, Rabbi Folger said: "With the blessings and encouragement of the great Torah scholars, rebbes, heads of yeshiva, rabbis and rabbis, I humbly accept the burden of the rabbinate in Vienna. The city where the great men of Israel, the geniuses of the world, the rabbis and rabbis of the Jewish faith and the Jewish people grew up and lived. I will do whatever is necessary to increase Torah and glorify it. To establish more Torah and educational institutions, to consolidate the communities and to try to restore, even if only on the fringes of the crown of this city.". The President of the European Rabbinical Conference and the Chairman of the Standing Committee, of which Rabbi Folger is a member, the Gaon Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, and the Rabbinical Director of the Conference, the Gaon Rabbi Moshe Lebel, congratulated Rabbi Folger on his election and promised that the European Rabbinical Conference will stand by him and assist him in raising the Torah Foundation, in strengthening and establishing Torah and educational institutions, and in nurturing the holy communities throughout Vienna. Studying a book of halacha Rabbi Aryeh Folger was born in Antwerp, Belgium to a Holocaust survivor father and a mother born in Marrakech, Morocco. His grandfather, Rabbi Asher Zelig Partik, and his son-in-law, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Folger, were collectors of the Rabbi Meir Baal Hans fund in Lansot, Galicia, and were among the Hasidim of Kolschitz and Bavo. In his youth, he studied at the 'Etz Chaim' Yeshiva in Antwerp, where he gained a special closeness from the late Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Trager. He later studied at the Gateshead Yeshiva in England with the gaon Rabbi Avraham Gurvitz. Photo: David Friedman For about three years he studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he gained the closeness of the Rosh Yeshiva, the Rabbi Ezrachi. He then immigrated to the United States and studied at the Rabbanu Chaim Berlin Yeshiva with the Gaon Rabbi Aharon Schechter. For five years he studied at the Beit Midrash of the Rabbanu Yitzhak Elchanan Yeshiva, where he was also ordained as a rabbi, when the Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Yeshayahu Halberstam of Zimgrad, also ordained him. For six years, Rabbi Folger served as the rabbi of Basel and later as the publishing director of the Histadrut Rabbinical Association of America. He served as the rabbi of Munich for about two years, and for about a year now he has been heading the kashrut system in Frankfurt and in other rabbinical positions, and has been serving as the rabbi of Karlsruhe in Germany, where the Korban Netanel served, while he is working on writing a halachic book for the OU organization, which is famous for having one of the largest kashrut systems in the world. Four Jewish communities Dozens of great and wise men of Israel, zt"l and vedalha, lived in Vienna, including some of the Talmudic sages of Ashkenazi, who founded the special Beit Midrash for Talmudic studies: "Gedole Ashtrich", or "Vienna Sages", named after the two first rabbis, Rabbi Tuvia of Vienna and Rabbi Yonatan of Vienna. According to some historical sources, the arrival of Jews to Vienna dates back to the first period after the flood. According to one source, the Jew Abraham came to Austria 860 years after the flood and founded a Jewish state there, whose colony was in Vienna. According to another source, the Jew Abraham came in 1500 before the Christian era and founded a Jewish state around Vienna, where a whole dynasty of sixty-two Jewish princes ruled, one after the other. Some speculate that even when Vienna was still a Roman colony and was sometimes called Vindobona, there were many Jews among the Roman legions that resided there. After the defeat of Hitler's armies, several thousand Jews returned to Vienna, many of them from Israel, and thousands of the remnants of the exodus from other countries immigrated there. Today, about eight thousand Jews live in Austria, who try to forget what the "kind" Viennese did to their brothers during the Nazi regime. There are currently four Jewish communities in Austria, with the largest of them - numbering about seven thousand people - operating in Vienna. Particularly notable in Europe is the fact that the Haredi communities in Vienna are also affiliated with the Community Committee and the elected rabbi. The city has many Torah and educational institutions, Torah studies and schools. The elected rabbi, Rabbi Aryeh Folger, said that the first mission he took on was to establish more and more Torah, education and charity institutions and to elevate and unite the holy communities.