[1] Some of his discourses were recorded in the book Madregas Ha-Adam (Hebrew: מדרגת האדם, Stature of Man).
[1] At eighteen,[4] Horwitz married the eldest daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Stein, a textile store owner from Shvekesna.
After attending a number of Salanter's classes and meeting with him, Horowitz decided to close his business, leave Shvekesna, and to study Torah full-time in Kovno.
After his wife's death, Horowitz divided his children among relatives and secluded himself in the home of a Kovno tinsmith by the name of Rabbi Shlomo.
To guarantee his solitude, he blocked the entrance to his quarters with a brick wall, which contained two small windows through which he maintained contact with his landlord when necessary.
Later, they threw a bundle of forged banknotes into his yard and then informed the police that his hideout was a base for the manufacture of counterfeit money.
Rabbi Shlomo told him that the man whom his daughter, Chaya Rivka, was supposed to marry, had broken the engagement.
Horwitz told Rabbi Shlomo he would marry Chaya Rivka, but only on the condition that he be allowed to isolate himself all week, returning to his family only for Shabbat and Yom Tov.
Rabbi Simcha Zissel persuaded Horwitz to make an effort to counteract the influences of the Haskala Movement.
[5] Once more, Horwitz left his seclusion and founded a network of kollels in 20 Polish and Russian towns, among them Shavli, Dvinsk, Minsk, Warsaw, Berditchev, Novardok, Odessa, Lida and Zetl.
In the meantime, the Germans conquered the area near Novardok, and the yeshiva students fled to Homel.
On Simchas Torah, the situation worsened, but Horwitz instructed his students to conduct hakafos as usual.
Forty-three years later, his students transferred his coffin to Israel, and in the summer of 1963 he was reinterred in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem.
[5][7] The anniversary of his passing - the 17th of Kislev - remains an important commemoratory date among Novardokers, who would gather together that day to strengthen each other.
[1] Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz particularly rejected elements of the Novardok philosophy, such as their extreme self-effacement and anti-social behaviors.
[8][2] In consonance with his stress on unwavering bitachon (trust in Divine providence), Horwitz's followers would board trains in time of civil war with no fear and establish hundreds of yeshivas in Russia.
The directors of these yeshivas were in constant contact with Horwitz, who guided and visited them, spending nearly every Shabbos in a different town.
He would respond by citing the verse (Genesis 12:9), “And Avraham journeyed, continuously traveling,” on which Malbim comments, “He went to sanctify Hashem’s name.”[5] One year, Horwitz spent Rosh Hashana in Homel, Shabbat Shuvah in Kiev and Yom Kippur in Kharkov, cities which are very distant from one another.
Additional branches were started in New York City by various of Rabbi Avrom Jofen's children and grandchildren.
For instance, Rabbi Yechiel Perr of Far Rockaway, New York started Yeshivas Derech Ayson, a.k.a.
An additional network of Novardok Yeshivas was founded after the Holocaust in France by Rabbi Gershon Liebman[9][10] (1905–1997).