Handwritten letter by the Tchebiner Rav Harav Dov Berish Weidenfeld upon His Arrival in Jerusalem, 1946.
A Lion Has Ascended from Babylonia
In the summer of 1946, the Tchebiner Rav arrived in the Holy Land after narrowly escaping the Nazi talons and spending six harrowing years in exile in Siberia and Bukharia. He arrived in Yerushalayim frail and penniless, and in this letter which he wrote several weeks after settling in Yerushalayim, he remorsefully expresses, “Forgive me for delaying my response, for I am entirely without sefarim, and even without Shas and Shulchan Aruch…”
A short while later, the Tchebiner Rav merited Divine providence when the Rabbi of Washington Rabbi Gedalya Silverstone passed away, and his Jerusalem apartment was offered to the Tchebiner Rav for nominal rent. Rabbi Silverstone’s widow requested that the executors of the estate leave the vast library of sifrei kodesh in the apartment, which provided the penniless Tchebiner Rav with the dual miracle of a comfortably-furnished apartment complete with a fully-stocked Jewish library.
The Tchebiner Rav Hagaon Harav Dov Berish Weidenfeld (1881-1966), author of Dovev Meisharim, was an illustrious Torah luminary and halachic authority in pre-Holocaust Galicia. Upon arriving in Eretz Yisrael, he was immediately accepted as one of the undisputed leaders of Orthodox Judaism in Eretz Yisrael.
Jerusalem, Sivan 5706 (1946). Page size: 20×25 cm. Letter is completely handwritten and signed. The letter was sent to Harav Yissachar Ber Halevi Rottenberg, Av Beis Din of Wodzisław.
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