lit a candle 3h agoNot really my world, I'll be honest, first I'd heard the name was in an obituary roundup. But that Tel Yitzchak Haggadah he worked on, from what I read, took real years of care. 81 is a full life. Rest well.
Their story
Israël Isaac Besançon was a French-Israeli rabbi, painter and author linked to Breslov Hasidism, known in French-speaking Jewish communities for teaching the thought of Nahman of Breslov and for founding the Shir Hadash community in Tel Aviv. Born in Nice on 27 December 1944, he died in Israel on 6…
Israël Isaac Besançon was a French-Israeli rabbi, painter and author linked to Breslov Hasidism, known in French-speaking Jewish communities for teaching the thought of Nahman of Breslov and for founding the Shir Hadash community in Tel Aviv. Born in Nice on 27 December 1944, he died in Israel on 6 September 2026 at the age of 81. Hebrew and French religious outlets reported that his health had declined in the weeks before his death and that he had been hospitalised. He was buried the next day in the old cemetery of Safed.
As a teenager he returned to religious practice and studied in yeshivas in Lucerne, Antwerp and Aix-les-Bains. Alongside Torah study he painted. He exhibited in Antwerp, then lived for years in Paris, where he kept a studio-gallery and worked on Jewish themes, including the Book of Ruth and the five Megillot.
He became a student of Levi Yitzhak Bender, a major twentieth-century transmitter of Breslov teaching, and with Bender's support founded a Beth Midrash and centre in France devoted to Nahman of Breslov. His work at Aix-les-Bains helped introduce Breslov to French-speaking Jews at a time when the movement was still little known there. Among those who studied with him was Rabbi Avraham Ifrah, later a Breslov teacher in France.
In New York he married the American experimental filmmaker Barbara Rubin, a figure of the 1960s New York underground. They settled in France, lived for a time in Aix-les-Bains, and had five children. Rubin died in France in 1980 at the age of 35 after complications linked to the birth of their fifth child. Besançon later married Déborah Shapiro; they had one child. Déborah Shapiro died in 2023. His brother-in-law was Rabbi David Nathan Shapiro of Clermont-Ferrand and Vichy.
In 1994 he made aliyah and settled in Tel Aviv, where he built Shir Hadash around Breslov study and practice: a Beth Midrash, a yeshiva for young people, a Talmud Torah, social help and a publishing house for his books and Breslov thought. In that period he also drew close to Israël Ber Odesser. His books include Courage!, Hitbodedut, Azamra, Marpe Lashon, Lehem Abirim and Mesilat ha-Kesharim, a guide to Likutei Moharan. In later years he directed the Pe'er HaLikoutim project, a Talmud-style commented edition of Likutei Moharan. As a painter he produced the illustrated Passover Haggadah Tel Yitzchak, published in Jerusalem in 1997 in a limited signed edition.
Funeral arrangements on 7 September 2026 brought him to Safed. He is remembered as a painter-turned-Breslov teacher who carried Nahman of Breslov into French Jewish life and then into a lasting Tel Aviv community.
Biography adapted from French Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Shir Hadash; Kikar HaShabbat; Breslev.fr.
Photos
1Rabbi Israël Isaac Besançon
by People Forever
same here, only knew the Shir Hadash name from a documentary clip years ago