Auction 37
Lot 105:
A rare shadrut letter given to the Shadar Rabbi Shuel Brima”t Ashkenazi, father of the Shaulson family. The letter is common to both the Chabad movement in Hevron and Jerusalem, as stated in the letter “we gathered together a community of kollels in the two holy cities, Jerusalem and Hevron.” The letter is directed towards Sefardi countries (Egypt, Tunisia, Djerba, and more). The senders are the “Sages and Rabbi and funders and administrators of the Yeshurun community and the heads of the Ashkenazi Chassidic yeshivot, Chabad, signed here in the holy cities of Hevron and Jerusalem.” Three reasons are given by the writers as to why they are approaching the Jews of these countries “because they had never been honored or called upon…” and they are:
1. Over the last four or five years, ‘our clout has degraded in the place of our birth, Northern Ashkenaz.’
2. For five years there has been a harsh famine in Israel.
3. “Additional struggles have been heaped upon us, from the goyim who live among us, in Hevron, who make the world even more of a struggle for the Jews, they take money from them.” At the end of the letter the ambassadors are required to bless all those whose names appear and who donate money, to pray for them and visit the holy sites in Israel, such as Kever Rachel, Kever Shmuel HaNavi, and Haggai, Zecharya, Malachi, and Shimon HaTzaddik, and the 70 members of the Sanhedrin, and Avner ben Ner, and Otniel ben Kanaz. The signatories are: Shimon Menashe ben Moshe [representative of the Jews of Hevron, great-grandson of the Ba’al HaTanya], Menachem Aryeh ben Shmuel HaLevi, Shneor Zalman ben Ephraim Yitzhak Epstein, Ze’ev Wolf HaLevi, Yosef ben Hillel Moshe, Schneor Zalman ben Menachem [Nahum] Yosef, Yaakov Zevulun ben Yosef Yehuda Leib, Yosef Yehuda Baharach, Dover ben Shmuel HaKatan, Avraham ben Shimon. Under the stamps are a number of lines of recommendation from the Sefardi rabbis of Jerusalem. The signatories: Ezra Har Rabbi Haim, Mordechai Eliezer Suzin [Arzei HaLevanon 3rd Section, p. 1504], Yehoshua Alai [Arzei HaLevanon 2nd section, p. 744], Eliyahu Yaakov Nissim [Arzei HaLevanon, 1st section, p. 280].
During his travels, in Izmir in 1958 Rabbi Haim Palagi added to the letter with a recommendation handwritten and signed “I hereby come in the margins, to add that Rav Shaul Bechir Hashem, from the holy communities of Hevron and Jerusalem, that the gates of justice should open for him, and I will bless him over the Torah, and I sign here in Izmir in Cheshvan 1948.” This letter was first published by Rav Betzalel Landoy, the Ma’ayan, Tammuz 1969, and a copy of the letter was printed later in the Book of Hevron, p. 225, and in Migdal Oz, p. 525 (from the History of Chabad in the Holy Land). Written with vowels and with some words written larger. The letter is 78.5×55.5cm, in a large frame of 85x62cm. Signs of folding and use throughout its length and width, generally good condition. The item was brought to auction from a private collection.
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