Rabbi Yosef Zundel Salant’s
Handwritten Tzavaah (will) to His Children
Handwritten last will and testament of Rabbi Yosef Zundel Salant to his children. In his will, he specifies the inheritance that he is leaving to his wife and instructs his sons to treat her with utmost respect.
“And you shall not be upset when you give her,
for she earned it,
as she did not know that I was poor,
and she had no choice but to suffer with me in my poverty and humiliation from the loans, credits and constant need to repay them.
She suffered alone, and she did not protest a word,
accepting it all with love,
and serving me with care, and honor to fulfill my wishes…”
He concludes with a blessing to his children, “And in this merit, Hashem should fulfill all the desires of your heart for goodness, and grant you and all your descendants long life and blessed years… and all your sons and sons-in-law should be talmidei chachamim and tzaddikim, and all your daughters and daughters-in-law should be modest and righteous…”
Rabbi Yosef Zundel Salant (1786-1865) was called by Rabbi Itzele Blazer “a holy, awesome man”. He was the prime disciple of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin who perpetuated the golden chain of the Vilna Gaon’s Torah. He was called by many the ‘Third Mouth of the Gr”a, ’ relaying the foundations of mussar to his own disciple Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.
The latter expressed that his master, “Opened before him the gates of light and truth…He was a ladder stationed on the earth whose head reached to the heavens.”
His disciple Rabbi Yisrael Salanter absorbed the foundations of mussar from his master and went on to found and disseminate the mussar movement throughout Eastern Europe. Rabbi Yisrael expressed in a letter(see next lot): “By my estimation, I have never found a servant of G-d as my master and teacher.”
Rabbi Zundel Salant’s son-in-law Rabbi Shmuel Salant, Rav of Yerushalayim, described him: “As great as he was in righteousness, so he was great in Torah; and as great as his breadth was in the Revealed Torah, so was his comprehensive knowledge of the Hidden Torah. He was the greatest of the generation in Torah and character traits, yet in his awesome and wondrous humility, he concealed his greatness from others.”
Jerusalem, prior to 1865. Small blue paper. Page size: 14×11 cm. Handwritten on both sides and autographed. Good condition.
Provenance: Archive of the late Dr. Yeshayhu Winograd .
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