On parchment.
Signed by the following Five important Rabbis.
Rabbi Moses Zevulun Margolies was born in the small Lithuanian city of Meretz, not far from Kovna and Slobodka. On his father’s side, he was the grandson of Rabbi Abraham Margolies, chief of the bet din of Telshe, and of Rabbi Wolf Altschul, chief of the bet din of Lutzan who traced his lineage to Rashi. On his mother’s side, he was the grandson of Reb Eliyahu Krosczer, the brother-in-law of the Vilna Gaon. Ordained by his uncle and by Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Halpern, the rabbi of Bialystok in the year 1876. He served as rabbi of Sloboda for 12 years. In 1889 he was invited to assume the chief rabbinate of Boston. In 1906 he was called to the rabbinate of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York, a post which he held until his death.
His primary occupation was study. The Talmud was always open on the dining room table. He began study at five in the morning and he would make a siyyum on the completion of the whole Talmud every year on the yahrzeit of his mother. It meant that he covered seven pages of the Talmud every day. Rabbi Margolies introduced the system which supervised the distribution of kosher meat in New York City. He served as president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. He founded the New York Kehillah and the Central Relief Committee (later absorbed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). An early Zionist, Rabbi Margolies was a member of the Mizrachi Organization of America. He also served as president of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva (which ultimately became Yeshiva University) for several years, presiding over the ordination of a generation of Orthodox rabbis.
Gifted with a sharp and crisp wit, he used it not to entertain people but to drive home a point and to help solve a problem. He was consulted by people of all religious persuasions on both personal matters and communal issues. On one occasion, he was consulted by the impresario Meyer Weisgal who had scheduled a performance of “The Romance of a People” at the Polo Grounds in New York on a Saturday night in late August which coincided with the first selihot (penitential service). The performance was to start 8:00 in the evening which, at that season of year, would involve violating the Sabbath. Weisgal wanted the rabbi to grant absolution for the Sabbath violation. “Mr. Weisgal, ” the rabbi responded, “You came to the wrong Moses; I would have to refer you to the original Moses. He was the one who gave us the Sabbath.” A wise and witty observation ended the inquiry.
His last public appearance just months before his death was at a Madison Square Garden rally against Hitler’s Nuremberg laws. He had to be carried on to the stage. His hands trembled, but his voice never wavered, as he read his message. When he finished, 20,000 people rose to their feet in reverence and appreciation. He was known to many as the RaMaZ (an acronym for Rabbi Moses Zevulun).
Rabbi Dov Arye b. Abraham ha-Kohen Levinthal (Bernard Louis, 1865–1952), was born in Lithuania, went to the United States in 1891 after having studied at the yeshivot of Kovno, Vilna, and Bialystok. Settling in Philadelphia, he succeeded his father-in-law, Eleazar Kleinberg, as rabbi of Congregation B’nai Abraham, where he served until his death, and as head of the United Orthodox Hebrew Congregations of Philadelphia.
Rabbi Levinthal was an able organizer and was responsible for the establishment of a number of institutions tending to the religious and social needs of the immigrant Jewish community, such as the Central Talmud Torah, out of which later grew the Yeshivah Mishkan Israel, and a municipal va’ad ha-kashruth to supervise ritual slaughtering. One of the founders of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada in 1902, of which he was the first president, his energy and wide range of interests enabled him to represent the Orthodox point of view in the greater Jewish community. He was a founder of the American Jewish Committee and a member of the delegation sent by the American Jewish Congress to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
Rabbi Hillel HaKohen Klein was born 1844 in Baracska, Bars County, Hungary (now Bardonovo, Slovakia), to son of Zeev Tzvi, who was Talmid of the Chatam Sofer of Pressburg.
Rabbi Hillel was Talmid of Ktav Sofer, and was son-in-law of Mendel Hirsch, the director of Orth. Jewish school in Frankfurt, Germany, grandson of Frankfurt Rav Rabbi Samson Raphael Rafael Hirsch.
From 1874 to 1891 he was in Russia, first at Kiev then at Libau, where he held an important position as rabbi. With the increase of anti-Semitism in Russia, he was forced to leave the country, accepting the invitation of the late Rabbi Jacob Joseph to come to the Congregation Ohab Zedeck, then in Norfolk Street. He began his long service as a rabbi of this synagogue in 1891 and continued in charge after the merger in May 1923, with Pincus Elijah Congregation. He was president of the Kolel Shomre Hachomos. In February 1923, 300 friends of Dr. Klein gave a dinner in his honor at the Broadway Central Hotel.
He was very instrumental in preserving Kosher Ritual Slaughter Laws in the United States and fought hard for its existence.
Rabbi Klein was one of the most influential Rabbanim in prewar America. In addition, he was a member of Chief Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Joseph’s Bias Din (Rabbinical Court).
At the time of his death, he was the honorary president of the Agudas Ha-Rabbonim, president of the newly formed Agudath Israel of America, treasurer of the Ezras Torah fund, and Nasi of Kolel Shomrei Hachomos in Jerusalem. Although a member of all these organizations Rav Klein once remarked: “there is but one title that I bear with a conscious pride, and that is Hillel HaKohen”.
Rabbi Bernard (Dov) Revel (1885 –1940) was an Orthodox rabbi and scholar. He served as the first President of Yeshiva College from 1915 until his death in 1940. The Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, as well as the former Yeshiva Dov Revel of Forest Hills, are named after him.
Rabbi Revel was born in Prienai, a neighboring town of Kaunas, then part of the Russian Empire, now in Lithuania. He was a son of the community’s Rabbi Nachum Shraga Revel. His father was his first teacher, and when Nachum Revel died in 1896 he was buried next to his close friend Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor – indicative of his knowledge and stature.
He briefly studied in Telz Yeshiva, attending the lectures of its Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch. He was also taught by the renowned Rabbi Yitzchok Blazer and learned in the Kovno kollel. Revel received semicha at the age of 16, but it is not known from whom. Thereafter, the young scholar earned a Russian high school diploma, apparently through independent study. He also became involved in the Russian revolutionary movement, and following the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, was arrested and imprisoned. Upon his release the following year, he emigrated to the United States.
Immediately after his arrival, Revel enrolled in New York’s RIETS yeshiva. He received a Master of Arts degree from New York University in 1909. Around this time, one of America’s senior rabbis and president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, Rabbi Bernard Levinthal of Philadelphia, visited the yeshiva and, after discussing Talmudic topics with the new student, invited him to come to Philadelphia as the rabbi’s secretary and assistant. Revel accepted the post and began to familiarize himself with the alien milieu of American Jewry.
Besides for his research, Revel channeled his intellect towards strengthening the foundation of Jewish Orthodoxy in America. He was most concerned with problems of maintaining traditional observance in the modern setting. He sought to build up an educational system for American Jewry where they would not feel alienated. In his speeches, Revel rarely, if ever, used difficult Torah language. Instead, he used very simple terms that were readily understandable. At a speech for the Rabbinic Council of America (RCA) Revel praised “the light of human reason”, and declared “the ascending spirit of mankind will triumph.”
Rabbi Revel was a presidium member of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis from 1924, later being appointed its honorary president, and authored many articles on Jewish subjects in various Hebrew periodicals such as the Jewish Quarterly Review, Yagdil Torah, Ha-Pardes, and various Yeshiva student publications. He started writing a commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud in Philadelphia, but this was never published. He was an associate editor of Otzar Yisrael, the Hebrew Encyclopedia. In 1935 he became the first vice president of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1986, he appeared on a $1 U.S. Postage stamp, as part of the Great Americans Series. U.S. engraver Kenneth Kipperman, who designed the stamp, was suspended for including a tiny Star of David, invisible to the naked eye, in Revel’s beard.
Rabbi Binyomin Aronowitz was born in Varzhan, Lithuania. He received his rabbinical training in the yeshivot of Teishe and Volozhin. Rabbi Aronowitz came to America in 1906 and took a pulpit in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1910, he was appointed a rosh yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, where he taught until his death in 1945.
He published his writings in various Torah journals, served as president of the Agudath Harabbonim of America, and was an active member of Va ad Harabbonim and Agudath Yisroel.
Measures 32 x 25.5 Cm.
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Lot #113