ABSTRACT
Among the Hasidic tzadikim living in Israel today, one man is made conspicuous by his appearance. It is the rabbi Menachem Mendel Taub, who now heads the Hasidic dynasty of Kaliv (the Yiddish name of the Hungarian town of Nagykálló). While the faces of prominent rabbis are generally adorned with huge beards, the Kaliver Rebbe has long white earlocks, but on his cheeks and chin there is only a very thin beard. It is a memento of his imprisonment in Auschwitz, where he was transported in 1944, during which the infamous doctor Josef Mengele, among others, experimented on him. The rabbi's brother did not survive Mengele's brutal pseudo-scientific practices.
