Aryeh Levin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rabbi Aryeh Levin on the cover of "A Tzaddik in Our Time"

Rabbi Aryeh Levin (March 22, 1885 - March 28, 1969), affectionally known as Reb Aryeh, was an Orthodox rabbi who was known as "The Tzadik {"saint") of Jerusalem" for his kindness and attention to the poor, sick and downtrodden elements of society, and as "The Father of Prisoners" for his work with members of the Jewish Underground movements who were imprisoned by the British during the British Mandate period and with convicted criminals. Notwithstanding his activism, he behaved with extreme modesty and humility, exuding a quiet, personal warmth that touched many Jews, both religious and secular. One of his daughters married Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, who is the long-time leader of Lithuanian Haredi Jewry in Israel.

Rabbi Levin was the subject of the book A Tzaddik in Our Time: The life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin by Simcha Raz.

1 Early life
2 Marriage and family
3 Father of the Prisoners
4 Attendance to the Sick
5 Convoy of 35 bodies
6 References

[edit] Early life

Reb Aryeh was born in the village of Urla, near Bialystock, northern Lithuania, to his parents, Binyamin Beinish and Ethel Levin. He had two older sisters, Miriam and Faige. At the time of his birth, his father was already quite old, and was not able to continue his work as a forester for many years after Reb Aryeh's birth. As a result, the boy grew up in a home poor in materialism but rich in hospitality and kindness to others.

From his father, Reb Aryeh acquired a love of Torah learning and a desire for saintliness. Throughout his life he adopted his father's habit of reciting Mishnayos by heart wherever he found himself.

Until the age of 12, his Torah education was conducted by various melamdim who taught in and around his village. At age 12, Reb Aryeh decided to leave home to acquire Torah wisdom from the leading scholar-rabbis of the yeshiva world. Like other itinerant students, he slept either on the benches of the local synagogue or in the hekdesh (public lodginghouse for beggars and vagrants), and received a daily meal either from local families or from relatives whom he sought out on his journeys. In this way, Reb Aryeh studied at the great yeshivas of Slonim, Slutsk, Volozhin, and Brisk during his teens.

When the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904, leading to the conscription of thousands of young Jewish men, Reb Aryeh, then 19, decided to escape the draft by emigrating to Israel. Not having any money with which to travel, he appealed to the head of the Volozhin yeshiva for a letter of recommendation to the yeshiva trustees in Minsk. When he arrived at the home of one of the trustees with this letter, the man gave him three rubles for his journey. Reb Aryeh burst into tears. After the Shabbat which Reb Aryeh spent with his host, the man's family decided to raise the gift to 40 rubles, enough to get him to the port of Odessa, acquire a passport, and pay for half his passage to Israel.

Returning to his parents' home to make preparations, Reb Aryeh found his father seriously ill and the poverty in the house dire. The night before his arrival, the only milk cow his parents owned became sick and died. Reb Aryeh spent many months caring for his father and managing the house. He finally embarked on the voyage to Israel nearly a year later, arriving in the port of Jaffa on February 6, 1905.

His parents were subsequently fined 300 rubles for his desertion from the army, which Reb Aryeh paid from his new home in Jerusalem.

[edit] Marriage and family

A month after his arrival in Israel, Reb Aryeh was engaged to the sister-in-law of Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank, a leading sage of Jerusalem. The two were married on Friday, July 14, 1905. Their first daughter, Rasha, was born on April 22, 1906, and another daughter, Shifra, was born on November 2, 1907. Though Reb Aryeh received a small stipend from the yeshiva in which he learned, it was not enough to support his growing family. In December 1908, he left his wife and daughters for a voyage to Marseilles, where he hoped his fortunes might change.

He received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Shmuel Salant, Rabbi Chaim Berlin, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in 1909.

From 1917 until the end of his life, he served as the masgiach ruchani (spiritual advisor) and supervisor in the Etz Chaim Talmud Torah for young boys.

[edit] Father of the Prisoners

In 1931, at the request of the British Mandate, Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook appointed Levin the official Jewish Prison Chaplain, a position he informally had filled since 1927. He accepted the position on the condition that he receive no pay.

Each Shabbat he would walk from his home in the Mishkenot Yisrael neighborhood to the Jewish prisoners held in the Russian Compound. Those held there were political prisoners, guilty of crimes like weapons possession or smuggling. Most belonged to one of the underground groups: Palmach, Haganah and later, Irgun and Lehi.^[1]

He spent time with the prisoners, praying with them, passing messages back and forth for their families.

[edit] Attendance to the Sick

Reb Aryeh was also known for his habit to visit sick people in various hospitals. He was very concerned that there were sick people who had no visitations because they had no family to do so. He would sit for hours near the beds of the sick. Most known for his visits in the Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem and in hospitals for lepers. Interestingly, despite the risk for infecting himself, he would visit lepers and even the lepers hospital in Bethlehem which was almost entirely for Arabs.

[edit] Convoy of 35 bodies

After the Israeli War of Independence, when the bodies of the Convoy of 35 were returned to Israel, the IDF Chief Rabbinate couldn't verify the identity of 12 bodies. The problem of the identification was due to the heinous mutilation of the bodies. To solve the problem, Reb Aryeh was handled the task to perform the 'goral hagra' (hagra = Vilna Gaon), a process in which the reader of the Torah is led to certain verses which give hints of the subjects in question. This ceremony is unique and rarely performed. This is among the best known modern examples of its use.[1]