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R. Isaac Blaser (R. Itzelle Peterburger) & 24 others, Jerusalem 1900

כתב מה"ר יצחק בלאזער - Manuscript - Hasidic

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Details
  • Lot Number 46490
  • Title (English) R. Isaac Blaser (R. Itzelle Peterburger) & 9 others
  • Title (Hebrew) כתב מה"ר יצחק בלאזער
  • Note Manuscript - Hasidic
  • City Jerusalem
  • Publication Date 1900?
  • Estimated Price - Low 2,000
  • Estimated Price - High 3,000

  • Item # 1294371
  • End Date
  • Start Date
Description

Physical Description

[2] pp., 280:220- mm., light age staining, creased on folds, faded ink on stationary, signed in ink by 24 rabbis, stamps.

Also signed by many Hasidic rabbis of Jerusalem.

 

Detailed Description   

A letter to the North African Jewish community to solicit funt for the Central Committee of the United Jewish Community in Jerusalem signed by 24 rabbis incuding:

R. Isaac Blaser (Reb Itzelle Peterburger; 1837–1907), Russian rabbi and educator. R. Blaser was one of the foremost disciples of R. Israel Lipkin (Salanter), whose Musar (ethicist) movement he helped develop and lead. In the early 1850s, R. Blaser moved from his native Vilna to Kovno, Lithuania, where he came under the influence of Lipkin. In 1864 he reluctantly accepted the rabbinate of St. Petersburg, hence the name by which he is familiarly known, "Reb Itzelle Peterburger." During this time he wrote halakhic works and responsa, arousing the opposition of the maskilim. He left the rabbinate in 1878, returning to Kovno where he headed the kolel ("advanced talmudical academy"), and sent emissaries throughout the world to gain support for it. He helped to found the yeshivah of Slobodka. About 1891, as the result of bitter controversy concerning the Musar movement, he left the kolel of Kovno and helped to found other such Musar-oriented schools elsewhere. Increasing opposition to the Musar movement (1896–98) and to R. Blaser, its chief exponent, forced the yeshivah to leave its premises in Slobodka, and it finally became established in Kelm (1898).

In 1904 R. Blaser emigrated to and settled in Jerusalem, where he passed on. His main contribution to the Musar movement was his emphasis on acquiring "fear of the L-rd" (i.e., piety) by means of emotional meditation in works of musar. Unlike other disciples of R. Salanter, who expounded musar intellectually, R. Blaser held that knowledge and conceptualization were inadequate to the task of curbing man's baser instincts. "Fear of the L-rd" could be aroused only by an unsophisticated contemplation of man's physical vulnerability, his moral lowliness, and his punishment for continued disobedience. Since he held that the form of such meditation makes a more lasting impression than the contents, he prescribed the reading aloud of musar texts in a melancholy melody, with frequent periods of weeping. Similarly, his preaching was simple, sad, and usually accompanied by tears. R. Blaser's major literary contribution to the Musar movement, Or Yisrael ("Light of Israel"; 1900), was often reprinted, and for several decades was the only available exposition of musar. R. Blaser here expounded the fundamentals of the Musar approach and presented excerpts from the letters of R. Israel Lipkin, along with evaluations of the teachings of the founders of the Musar movement and of some of its leading personalities.

His major halakhic work is Peri Yizhak ("Fruit of Isaac"); the first volume was published in Vilna in 1881, some 14 years after he had completed writing it. The second volume was published posthumously in 1912. He contributed numerous articles, both on halakhah and musar, to the various rabbinic journals of the day. Much of his writing remained unpublished.

R. Elimelech Perlman son of R. Yisrael Isser Perlman Rabbi of Rozwadow (Galicia), [disciple of the Chozeh of Lublin and mechutan with the Rebbes of the house of Dzikov (Tarnobrzeg). After the death of his father in 1850, he ascended to Jerusalem together with his mother Rebbetzin Esther Faiga [her first marriage was to Rebbe Shlomo Leib of Łęczna], to live near her father, Rabbi Asher Cahane-Shapira Rabbi of Żołynia, who ascended to Jerusalem in 1740. In Jerusalem, he married the daughter of Rabbi Baruch Binyamin Ze’ev “Rabbi Wolf Weinstock”, [disciple of the Chozeh of Lublin and the “Good Jew” of Neustadt, who ascended to Jerusalem in 1851 and was appointed dayan. Very close friend of Rebbe Elazar Menachem of Lelov, died in 1872]. Rabbi Elimelech was one of the most important community activists and leaders of the Hasidic community in Jerusalem and its institutes. He was also involved in building many neighborhoods in Jerusalem, the most famous among them is Batei Perlman adjacent to Me’ah She’arim.

R. Dov Ber b. Abraham Menahem Abramowitz (1860-1926) was born in Vabalninkas (or Novolnick?), Lithuania, moved with his family to Jerusalem at the age of ten. Educated in his youth by R. Moses Nehemiah Kahana and R. Eleazar Dan Ralbag at the Etz Hayyim yeshivah, he was later ordained by R. Samuel Salant and he served as a district rabbi in Jerusalem. He immigrated to Philadelphia in 1894 and moved to New York two years later to become the rabbi of Mishkan Israel Anshei Suwalk. R. Abramowitz also had a Hebrew printing shop, Zion Printing. R. Dov Ber succeeded the recently deceased R. Shalom [Solomon] Elhanan Halevi Jaffe as the chief dayyan of St. Louis in 1906 and became "one of St. Louis's best known Orthodox rabbis" (USJ). R. Abramowitz endeavored to strengthen American Orthodoxy and helped found RIETS and the Agudath Harabonim. He was active in Zionist affairs and his support for the Va'ad ha-Kollel in Jerusalem was much appreciated by its leaders. He formed the first branch of Mizrahi in America in St. Louis, thus establishing the city as the center of religious Zionism in the country. He later served as the president of American Mizrahi. In 1918 he partook in the first meeting of the American Jewish Congress and he attended the London Zionist Conference in 1920. The following year he moved back to Jerusalem where he passed on and was buried on the Mount of Olives. His grandson was Abram Leon Sachar. R. Abramowitz wrote Dat Yisroel (New York 1899-1905) a multi-volume work on halakha and religious observance; Ktav ha-Dat (New York 1900) homilies; Sefer Ketubah ((New York 1901) on weddings; Beit Va'ad la-Hakhamim (New York 1903) the first rabbinic journal published in America; and several other works.

R. Menachem Mendel Rubin (1850-1916), son of R. Shmuel Aharon Rabbi of Kurtshin, outstanding Torah genius from Galicia and one of the leaders of the Hasidic settlement in Jerusalem. Wrote Masa Meron and Einei Menachem.

R. Abraham Eber ben Samuel Hirschowitz (1840-1924). author of  Bet Midrash Shemu’el (Jerusalem-Toledo 1905) discourses for the Days of Awe. R. Hirschowitz was the av bet din in Toledo Ohio.

R. Aryeh Leib Roshkas (1838-1914) Lithuanian rabbinical scholar, rabbi of Shnipshtik, author of several scholarly works on Talmud and halacha. He came to Jerusalem in 1900.

R. Yitzchok Eliezer Charlap (1855-19??) member of an old Jerusalem family of rabbinical scholars and community leaders.

R. Joel Moses Salomon (1838–1912), Ereẓ Israel pioneer and founder of Petah Tikvah. Born in Jerusalem, Salomon was a descendant of a pupil of Elijah the Vilna Gaon and settled in Ereẓ Israel in 1808. His grandfather, Solomon Zalman Ẓoref, and his father, R. Mordecai Salomon, were leaders of the early Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem. Salomon was educated at yeshivot in Jerusalem and Lithuania. He studied printing at Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and, on his return to Jerusalem, he and several partners established a printing press. In March 1863, they printed the first issues of the first Ereẓ Israel periodical, Ha-Levanon (spelled by them Halbanon), edited by Jehiel Brill, to which Salomon contributed.

Salomon was active in the Ashkenazi community and strove to obtain for it a status equal to that of the Sephardi community and to make peace between its factions. He joined a group of young community leaders who wished to extend the scope of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem and even engage in agricultural work. Salomon was one of the founders of Jerusalem's Naḥalat Shivah quarter (1869), one of the first to be built outside the walls of the Old City, and participated in the establishment of Me'ah She'arim and other quarters. He took active part in the Yishuv Ereẓ Israel Association, which endeavored to purchase agricultural land for settlement. In 1877–78 he published the paper Yehudah vi-Yrushalayim ("Judea and Jerusalem"), in which he advocated plans for agricultural settlement and called for "action and deed." In the autumn of 1878 he was among the founders of Petaḥ Tikvah; after the first settlers were severely affected by malaria, he helped establish the nearby settlement of Yahud and to attract to it scholars, in order to establish a yeshivah there. After living there for seven years, he returned to Jerusalem and took up his public work for the institutions of the old yishuv.

R. Gedalya Nahman Bruder (1857-1940), prominent Lthuanian rabbi and member of the Kollel.  R. Zalman haKohen Rubin, R. Asher Dov Sussman R. Nahum Rogosnitzky, R. Ya'akov Sarasohn, R. Asher Eliezer Levy, R. Al Zev Wolfsohn, and several others.

Withe the stamped signature of R. Samuel Salant (1816–1909) chief rabbi of Jerusalem and one of the foremost 19th-century rabbis in Jerusalem. Born near Bialystok (Russia, now Poland), R. Salant studied at yeshivot in Vilna, Salant, and Volozhin. He set out for Erez Israel in 1840, but was delayed for a few months in Constantinople, where he first met Sir Moses Montefiore, with whom he established a firm friendship. In 1841 he reached Jerusalem, where the heads of the kolel Lita appointed him rabbi of the Ashkenazi community. A leading figure in Jerusalem, he became Ashkenazi chief rabbi in 1878, holding the position until his death. Salant strove to develop the institutions of the Ashkenazi community, which increased from 500 members at his arrival to 30,000 at the time of his death, and succeeded in obtaining for the Ashkenazim the official status previously enjoyed only by the Sephardi community. Between 1848 and 1851 and in 1860 he traveled to several European countries to collect money for religious institutions in Jerusalem. Salant was a founder of the Ez Hayyim Talmud Torah and Yeshivah, the Bikkur Holim Hospital, and the Keneset Israel General Committee, which united all the kolelim under a single administration. He also encouraged the establishment of the Jewish quarters, such as Me'ah She'arim, Keneset Israel, and others, outside the Old City walls. He tried to lessen the friction between the veteran settlement and the new yishuv, combated the activities of the mission schools and ameliorated the relations between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. Salant lived an exemplary life of the utmost frugality. He devoted himself without stint to the needs of his community. He was an outstanding posek, distinguishing himself by his power of decision, and showed a definite tendency toward leniency in his decisions.

 

Hebrew Description  

כתב ע"ח ה"ר יצחק בלאזער; ר' דוב בער אברמוביץ, מזכיר; ר' זלמן הכהן רובין; ר' גדליה נחמן ברודר; ר' מנחם מנדל רובין; ר' אלימלך פרלמאן; ר' אשר דוב זיסמאן, ועוד

רבי אריה ליב ראשקס (תקצ"ח-תרע"ד), מגדולי רבני ווילנא וירושלים. אב"ד שניפשוק (חתנו רבי מאיר באסין וחתן חתנו רבי ישראל זאב גוסטמן מילאו את מקומו ברבנות שניפשוק, מפרברי ווילנא). מחבר "אבן לשם בדביר" - ביאורים על ספר ראב"ן (ירושלים תרע"ג)..

 

Reference Description   

EJ; HPA; Wikipedia