A special and moving letter of appeals from Rabbi Dovid Bliacher for the benefit of a thousand students from the Beis Yosef Yeshiva network – of refugees from Novardok, Russia, Ukraine, Mezeritch, Bialystok, and Pinsk.
A handwritten letter of such content is extremely rare and has never appeared at auction.
The letter mentions the forty Beis Yosef Yeshivahs already established throughout Poland.
On official Yeshivah stationary in Yiddish, Polish and English. Lacking right side of page not affecting written text.
Mezeritch 1932. 28 X 19 cm.
Rabbi Dovid Bliacher was one of the greatest disciples of Rabbi Yosef Yudel Horowitz ("Grandfather of Novardok"). Known as the founder of the Mussar yeshivot in Poland and as the head of the Mezeritch Podlaski yeshiva.
Born in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to a family of scholars. He studied in many Yeshivahs. He diligently learned Mussar as a student of his grandfather from Novardok. At the beginning of the First World War, he moved with his Rav to Kiev, and established a Yeshivah there.
After the death of his grandfather R. Yudel in 1920, Rabbi Bliacher moved to Mezeritch in Poland and established the Beis Yosef Yeshiva in the name of his Rav and continued to direct it with the same learning curriculum. Hundreds of young men from all over Poland came to the yeshiva despite the economic difficulties, never the less in Hasidic Poland, this was a great place to be.
At the onset of the war the Nazis destroyed Yeshivahs In Mezeritch.
Most of the students of the Torah institutions fled to the Soviet-occupied territory and established their Yeshivah the town of Nimtzin in the Vilna district. Rabbi Bliacher fled with his students to Brisk, which was also under Soviet occupation, but soon returned to Mezeritch because of the Communists’ persecution of Judaism, relying on passages of the sages that they will be protected.
Refusing to leave Mezeritch without a leader. He taught his students underground while the yeshiva was split into several branches, to increase the chances of the students being saved.
Rabbi Bliacher managed to open kitchens that provided food for all the students and thus could sustain them. When the Ghetto was established in Mezeritch, he became the leader of the remaining Jews, while on the one hand, he encouraged them to persevere and on the other hand, they prepared to die for the sanctification of Hashem’s name. The Rabbi passed away with the Jews and his students in the month of Iyar, 1944.
Stamp of Yeshiva Bais Yosef on bottom left.
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Lot #239