Rabbi Mordecai Lipa Teomim was both typical and atypical of the Jews of Galicia. Atypical because he was a self-taught genius - a Torah scholar and Chasid who wrote and spoke a more literary Polish than the non-Jewish gentry. But the fate he suffered at the mere beginnings of his life in the rabbinate are so typical that his life story is a microcosm of history. A self-educated genius, Rabbi Mordecai Lipa Teomim flabbergasted everybody with his apparent contradictions. e was a Chasid who wrote and spoke a more literary Polish than the non-Jewish gentry. Like so many Holocaust victims, his life ended too prematurely for him to have left a lasting mark on Jewish history, but Rabbi Wein’s portrayal will leave no doubt that had he lived, he would certainly have made one.