Shaul Shimon Deutsch
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, the Liozna Rebbe[citation needed] (born 1966), is a rabbi[citation needed] and author[citation needed] from New York City. He wrote and self-published a biography of his Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn entitled Larger than Life, which proved extremely controversial in Lubavitch circles.[citation needed]
Biography
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Shaul Shimon Deutsch was ordained as a rabbi by Chabad and subsequently earned a business degree.[citation needed]
Deutsch is the Rebbe of Anshei-Liozna, a Chasidic court that is centered in Boro Park, Brooklyn. He has been the Liozna Rebbe since 1995. The group appointed him their Rebbe at their synagogue on 45th Street in Brooklyn.
He took the name of the town of Liozna in Belarus (where the early Chabad movement was founded). Deutsch's group has been viewed negatively since the founding of Anshei-Liozna.
In 1998 he was the victim of a campaign of character assassination via the Internet. A forged Jewish Telegraphic Agency press release claimed that he had been arrested for "embezzlement" and the "counterfeiting" of "ten-dollar bills". He installed bulletproof glass in the windows of his home and synagogue.
Deutsch is married to Pe'er Deutsch and they have five children.
Deutsch founded and runs the Living Torah Museum. Deutsch specializes in explaining the meaning and exact explanation of the many animals mentioned in the Torah, Mishna and Talmud. Deutsch gives many examples of the various Temple offerings in the museum which attracts thousands of visitors each month.
Activities
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. He runs a City Harvest-affiliated food charity that feeds more than 1,000 poor people each week, with dozens of volunteers. The charity distributes $5.5 million of food annually.
His museum called the Living Torah Museum containing 979 archaeological objects that he says are worth nearly $15 million at his home in a building adjacent to his home and synagogue in Boro Park. The Museum was featured in the journal Biblical Archaeology Review and archaeologist Hershel Shanks, has declared that this was "the first museum that he knew of in the United States devoted to biblical archeology" adding that Deutch "has done what no one else in the United States (perhaps in the world outside of Israel) has done. ... All the big shots, all the people with access to the most sophisticated knowledge and current excavations, have not accomplished what Rabbi Deutsch has."
Bibliography
- Larger than life: The life and Times of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (Volume 1), Shaul Shimon Deutsch, ~ Chasidic Historical Productions 1995 ~ ISBN 0-9647243-0-8
- Larger than life: The life and Times of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (Volume 2), Shaul Shimon Deutsch, ~ Chasidic Historical Productions 1997 ~ ISBN 0-9647243-1-6
