Rav Chaim Elozor Wachs of Kalish zt"l
הרב חיים אלעזר בן אברהם יהודה וואקס זצ"ל
Sivan 30 , 5649
Rav Chaim Elozor Wachs of Kalish zt"l
The Gaon Rabbi Chaim Elozor Wachs of blessed memory was born in the year 5582 [1822] in the city of Tarnogrod. His father was the Gaon Rabbi Avraham Yehuda Leibush and his mother the saintly Chaya Tova of blessed memory. We know very little about his childhood and his youth before he became well known in the Jewish world as one of his generation's great halachic experts and a spiritual giant whose influence is engraved deeply in every area of Jewish life in his own time and for generations after, and this is not at all surprising, for he was humble and modest without equal. For this reason we do not know much about his origins. From a few slips of the pen, however, we learn that he was of a good and distinguished family. He wrote in one of his responsa (in the possession of his pupil, the head of the rabbinical court in the city of Pietrokov, the Gaon Yakov Aryeh Glazer [may the Lord avenge him!]) – I quote from memory – “And I, a descendent of the Bach”. [Bach: The name given to Yoel Sirkes (16th – 17th centuries), from the initials of the name of his major work, Bayis Chadash]. From this we may conclude that he was counted among the descendents of the Bach, of blessed memory; indeed as a child I heard all sorts of versions of his genealogy, such as that he was descended from Rashi and Rabbi Yohanan the cobbler, and that his lineage reached as far back as Dovid Hamelech.
We have no definite knowledge who his teachers were, but from his various responsa it seems that his most distinguished teacher in his early childhood was the Gaon Rabbi Sh. Z. Helir, the rabbi of Przemyśl.
While still very young he married Blima daughter of the Gaon Rabbi Moyshele Halberstam of blessed memory, rabbi of Zborów and elder brother of Chaim, the Gaon of Sanz. It was Chaim who investigated the young Gaon for his brother's daughter and was the “expert” concerning him; consequently it was natural that when the rabbinical office became vacant in Tarnogrod, the city of his birth, in the year 5600 [1840], the Gaon of Sanz would recommend rewarding the young Gaon with this high office.
https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/tarnogrod/tar121.html
