Auction 38
Lot 199:
Letter on official letterhead of the Beit Meir yeshiva in Bnei Brak. Handwritten and signed by Rabbi Zalman Rotberg, from Kislev 1973. Addressed to Rabbi Hillel Medaliya, Av Beit Din and Chief Rabbi of Antwerp. At the beginning he expresses happiness at the health of the addressee, and writes: “I hurry to answer him that we are busy with masechet gittin and we expect the Rav shlita’s visit to our yeshiva and to hear from him sweet things of Torah…our ears are ready to soak in his words…the times are not simple and the tragedies are great…”. Later he reveals some of the yeshiva’s financial difficulties and ends with blessings and his signature. Size: 27.5×21.5cm.
Rabbi Zalman Rotberg (1913-2002) was the head of Beit Meir in Bnei Brak and a member of the Council of Torah Sages of Degel HaTorah. He was born in Lipshinok (Belarus) to the town’s rabbi, Rabbi Tuvya Rotberg. He studied as a boy in the Shaar HaTorah yeshiva under the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Shkop, son of Rabbi Shimon Shkop. At the end of the 1920s he moved to study in the Mir yeshiva. In 1936 he moved to Israel with his close friend and later father-in-law, Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky. The two studied in the Lomja yeshiva led by Rabbi Reuven Katz, who even got them the permission to move to Israel. In 1942 he married Sarah, daughter of Rabbi Meir Karlitz. The suggestion of the shidduch was made by the Chazon Ish, the bride’s uncle.
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