Esther Farbstein

Esther Farbstein (; born 1946) is an Israeli historian, researcher, author, and lecturer. Considered the leading Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) scholar of the Holocaust, she focuses on the spiritual responses of Jews to Nazi persecution. She has introduced new sources for academic research on the Holocaust, and has also shepherded the incorporation of Holocaust education in Haredi girls schools. In 1994, she founded and became head of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Michlalah–Jerusalem College in Bayit Vegan, Jerusalem. She is the author of numerous books, articles, and monographs in Hebrew and English.

Early life and education Esther Heine was born into a Gerrer Hasidic family in Jerusalem in 1946. The daughter of Rabbi Yehuda Leib Heine, she is a great-granddaughter of the fourth Rebbe of the Ger Hasidic dynasty, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, known as the Imrei Emes.

She worked for many years as a master teacher at the Horeb Girls School in Jerusalem. In 1994, she founded the Center for Holocaust Studies at Michlalah–Jerusalem College, becoming its head. An example of the latter is a widely publicized story of 93 Bais Yaakov students in the Kraków Ghetto who committed mass suicide rather than be defiled by their German captors, outlining their decision in a letter dated 11 August 1942. Haredi author Jonathan Rosenblum calls Farbstein "a fighting historian".

In the absence of documentation, Farbstein pursued new sources to corroborate a story printed by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels about him blowing shofar on Rosh Hashana in Auschwitz for a group of 1,400 boys and young men sentenced to be gassed the following day. She asked each of her lecture audiences over a period of years if they knew anyone who had heard that shofar-blowing. In so doing, she located ten eyewitnesses who verified the incident.

Impact on Holocaust education in Haredi schools

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salign=right I felt that the way to open the study of the Holocaust was to find sources that would be acceptable to the Haredi public, but also reliable from a research standpoint; to choose and classify them; and, of course, to teach them against the background of the orderly study of history. — Esther Farbstein

Farbstein frequently lectures on Holocaust topics in international conferences and seminars for the public.

Personal life She is married to Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Farbstein, rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Hebron Yeshiva.