A unique letter from an unknown trip to Manchester by the famous Gaon Rabbi Shimon Yehuda HaCohen Shkop to his friend the Gaon Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Segal Rosh Yeshiva of Manchester. He also mentions his son Rabbi Yehuda Ze’ev Segal who was a yeshiva student at the time.
[Manchester], 1926.
15 lines fully in his Holy hand & signature.
In the letter, the esteemed Rabbi Shimon turns to Rabbi Segal seeking advice about whether he should remain in Manchester, and asks him to "Enquire and investigate the matter if it is worth it for me to suffer and waste my own time as well of the time of the many who await my return eagerly. To just sit & wait here until the important locals will finish what they have undertaken on behalf of the Grodno Yeshiva.
And please inform me through your dear son, Mr. Yehuda Yec”h, about all that I need to know, because, as you may know, how difficult it is for me to sit here with almost no activity, and I have almost no one to turn to regarding this matter.”
The famous Gaon Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Hakohein Shkop (1860-1939) was a Rosh Yeshiva ("dean") in the Telshe yeshiva and a renowned Talmudic scholar. He was born in Torez in 1860. At the age of twelve he went to study in the Mir yeshiva, and at fifteen he went to Volozhin yeshiva where he studied six years. His teachers were the Netziv and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, with whom he was very close.
Rabbi Shkop married a niece of Rabbi Eliezer Gordon and in 1885 was appointed to the Telz Yeshiva, where he remained for 18 years until 1903. While there, he developed a system of talmudic study which combined the logical analysis and penetrating insights of Rabbi Chaim Brisker with the simplicity and clarity of Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv) and which became known as the "Telz way of learning".
In 1903, he was appointed Rabbi of Moltsh, and in 1907 of Bransk. A famous pupil of his in Moltsh was Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna who studied under him for a year in 1906, before leaving to the Slabodka yeshiva when Rabbi Shkop himself left. During World War I, the communal leaders urged him to leave before the Germans arrived, but he refused and stayed with his community.
Between 1920 and 1939, at the request of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, he succeeded Rabbi Alter Shmuelevitz as Rosh Yeshiva of the renowned Sha’ar HaTorah in Grodno. He raised the level of the institution and transformed it into one of the finest yeshivos in Poland and beyond. Hundreds of young men flocked there from near and far.
Rabbi Shkop formed close bonds with the younger Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal, the future Manchester Rosh Yeshiva. He would sometimes come to England to fund raise for his yeshiva, and Rabbi Segal took advantage of these opportunities to serve as his attendant, spending one vacation at Rabbi Shimon’s summer resort, studying with him and accompanying him on his walks.
He published his classic essay titled Sha’arei Yosher. Rabbi Shkop’s Talmudic novellae are still studied in yeshivos throughout the world today.
22.5 X 17.2 Cm.
Filing holes.
The recipient the Gaon Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak HaLevi Segal (1881-1947), a disciple of the Alter of Novardok. A founder of the Etz Chaim yeshiva in London, he also established the Manchester yeshiva, which he headed for some 35 years.
Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak was an outstanding Torah scholar and an exalted Tzaddik. He devoted himself to disseminating Torah, and many of the rabbis of that time were his disciples (including Rabbi Shaul Wagschal of Gateshead, Rabbi Shmuel Alexander Unsdorfer, and others). Hegyonei Moharsha (p. 18, see enclosed copy) brings the wondrous testimony of two of his disciples, whose deceased father appeared to R. Moshe Yitzchak in a dream, requesting that he carefully supervise his orphaned sons. R. Moshe Yitzchak related the dream to them and asked them not to publicize it.
His son and successor as dean of the yeshiva was Rabbi Yehuda Ze’ev Segal (1911-1993), a holy Tzaddik and wonder-worker, who was very active in raising the awareness of the importance of guarding one’s speech, and was known as the Chafetz Chaim of England).
