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Second edition of the siddur first composed by Rabbi Solomon Schliefer, former rabbi of Moscow. R. Schliefer could not avoid signing a statement of several prominent Soviet Jews against the "aggression" of Israel during the Sinai Campaign, published in Izvestiya (Nov. 29, 1956). As consolation he received permission from the authorities to print - for the first time under the Soviet regime - a Jewish prayer book (3,000 copies). It consisted of photostated pages from pre-revolutionary prayer books, from which any reference to wars and victories (as, e.g., in the Hanukkah benedictions) were omitted. Schliefer called it Siddur ha-Shalom ("Peace Prayer Book," instead of the customary Siddur ha-Shalem, "complete prayer book"). R. Lewin's 1968 second edition was apparently a similiar result of the 1967 Israeli war.
R. Judah Leib Levin (1894–1971), Russian rabbi. Born in Yekaterinoslav, where his father, Eliezer Shemuel, was rabbi, Lewin studied at the Slobodka yeshiva. During World War I he became rabbi of the Ukrainian town Grishino (now Krasnoarmeisk, Ukraine), and later, for a short period, rabbi of his native Yekaterinoslav. Because of the high taxes imposed on religious clergy and conflicts with the leaders of the congregation he gave up the rabbinate and, returning to Krasnoarmeisk, engaged in the work of a religious scribe for various Jewish communities, particularly in Georgia. In 1957, when Rabbi Solomon Schliefer inaugurated the yeshiva in the Moscow Great Synagogue, Lewin was appointed principal. The head of the yeshiva was, according to official regulations, Rabbi Schliefer himself. Several months after Schliefer's death Lewin was appointed his successor, both as rabbi of the Great Synagogue and as head of the yeshiva. He did his best to fulfill his difficult task - to serve as semiofficial spokesman and apologist for the Soviet policy in matters of Judaism and at the same time to be a genuine spiritual leader to his congregation and refrain from acts and statements blatantly contradicting Jewish interests and the real sentiments of Soviet Jewry (as, e.g., condemning Israel's "aggression against the Arabs"). |
