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Letter of recommendation for a rabbi travelling to Erez Israel signed by R. Meir Yehiel Halevi Halstock, Admor of Ostrowiece (1852-1928). Born in Sabin, near Warsaw, the son of Abraham Itsche, a baker who was very pious and very poor. At the age often, he was taken to R. E1imelekh Shapira of Grodzisk, who advised his father to entrust the boy to the scholarly R. Berel Goldfarb. When he was seventeen years old, he married the daughter of R. Abraham of Warka. He lived a very ascetic life, spending the whole week in the Bet HaMidrash and returning to his family only on the Sabbath. His diligence was phenomenal. He could go through the whole of the Talmud between Purim and Passover. On the eve of Passover he would make a siyyum of the entire Talmud.
At the age of twenty-seven he became the rabbi of Skerniewice and received ordination from R. Yehoshua Trunk of Kutno and from his son-in-law R. Eliezer Waks of Kalish. His rabbinate in Skerniewice lasted for ten years, and in 1889 he became rabbi of Ostrowiece, where he spent almost the next forty years. When his spiritual guide, R. Elimelekh, died in 1892, he became rebbe and won the support of many hasidim of Grodzisk. He still visited R. Joshua Rokeah of Belz, R. David Moses of Chortkov, and R. Yehezkel of Sianiawa.
He was the great ascetic of Hasidism, who fasted every day for forty years, eating only a very frugal meal at night. Even the Sabbath was no exception. "On the Sabbath," he would say, "I can rejoice in the knowledge that I can fast easily." He was proud of his humble origins. "My father, of blessed memory, said that the best thing in the world is a freshly baked bread." He was also interested in astronomy and mathematics.
His health was exceedingly precarious. R. Abraham Mordecai Alter of Ger was one of his many colleagues who begged him to
forgo such hazardous extremes as fasting. But the rabbi refused to alter his life-style. Despite his physical frailty, he was wholeheartedly involved in communal affairs. When he heard that the Poles of Ostrowiece were preparing a pogrom, he instructed the Jewish authorities to organize a self-defense group. As soon as, the cowardly hoodlums appreciated that they were not dealing with defenseless victims, they dispersed. The Kishinev disorders were not reenacted in Ostrowiece.
During World War I, when a local Jewish teacher was accused of espionage, the rebbe pleaded with the military authorities that the man be released from jail. In 1921 his disciple R. Yehudah Joseph Leibish Rosenberg published his work Or Torah (Piotrokov, 1921), on Genesis. The rebbe was versed in Gematria, the method of exegesis based on the interpretation of a word or words according to the value of its Hebrew letters. In his talmudic studies, however, he was a follower of R. Jacob Pollack, the father of the pilpul.
In the last years of his life he was so weak from fasting that he could hardly walk. He was, however, strong enough to fight passionately for his community. He was succeeded by his son, R. Yehezkel, and it was R. Reuben Mandelbaum who recently published in two volumes Meir Einei Hakhamim, containing many of the discourses of the rabbi of Ostrowiece. His whole life was a lesson in the triumph of mind over matter.
The document is certified as true and accurate by R. Nahum b. David Zevi Ash (1858-1936) rabbi of Czestochowa in three lines, signed, stamped, not dated. |
