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Bidding Information
Lot #    22959
Auction End Date    3/3/2009 11:24:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Letter by R. Aryeh Levin
Title (Hebrew)    ëúá îä'ø àøé' ìåéï
Author    [Ms.]
City    Jerusalem
Publication Date    1959
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    [1] p., 156:114 mm., light age staining, ink on Yeshiva stationary, Ashkenazic script, signed, and dated.
          
Detailed
Description		    Letter by R. Aryeh Levin requesting dental assistance for a child of the yeshiva. R. Aryeh Levin (affectionately referred to as “Reb Aryeh”; 1885–1969), the most saintly figure in modern Israel. Aryeh Levin was born in Orla, near Grodno, Belorussia, to poverty-stricken parents. At the age of nine he left home to study at various yeshivot, notably the Yeshivah of Slutsk, then headed by R. Isser Zalman Meltzer, and subsequently in Volozhin. He immigrated to Erez Israel in 1905, continuing his studies in the Ez Hayyim yeshivah in Jerusalem. From 1915 until his last days his official position was spiritual mentor (mashgiah) to the talmud torah attached to the Ez Hayyim yeshiva. Although an outstanding talmudic scholar, receiving semikhah from the greatest rabbis of the time, R. Hayyim Berlin, R. Samuel Salant, and R. Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook, whose faithful follower he was, and although from 1949 he conducted a yeshiva in the upper rooms of his modest home, Reb Aryeh's fame and the widespread and boundless esteem in which he was held sprang not from his learning but his good works. Humble, and living in conditions of near poverty, he devoted his life for nearly 50 years, in an entirely honorary capacity, unwearyingly and without thought of self, to acts of charity and love. He appointed himself chaplain to the hospitals, especially the Leper Hospital, comforting mourners, bringing a message of love and hope to the distressed and the unfortunate, radiating benignity by the very touch of his hand.

Reb Aryeh regarded it as his special mission to attend to the needs of the Jewish political prisoners who had been incarcerated by the British Mandatory Government, particularly those who were sentenced to death, acting as a go-between between them and their families and accompanying them in their last moments. He was widely known as “the Rabbi of the Prisoners.” Reb Aryeh refused all honors, including the Freedom of Jerusalem, and never moved out of the poor quarter of Mishkenot in Jerusalem. Tens of thousands, including the most notable personalities in the country, attended his funeral.
          
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Listing Classification
Period
20th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Israel:    Checked
  
Subject
  
Characteristic
Language:    Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
Letters:    Checked
  
Kind of Judaica