Auction 38
Lot 280:
A Russian postcard, in which Rabbi Shmaryahu Medalya hy”d wrote by hand warm lines to his son Rabbi Hillel, who was in Israel and later became Rabbi of Antwerp. From 1936, around 2 years before he was murdered by the Russians. He opens: “My dear and favorite son, Mr. Hillel, we are all b”h well…we are worried about you because we haven’t received any letters from you for some time and we have written twice…”. At the end he adds a few words from his wife who expresses worry as well in Yiddish: “Hillelenka, my dear, write something, I am kissing you many times, Mother.” Sent to Tel Aviv, Neve Shalom, to Avraham Barnet for Hillel Medalya. 14.5×10.5cm, Russian mail stamps.
Rabbi Shmaryahu Yehuda Leib Medalya hy”d (1873-1938) was the son of a Chabad Chassidic family and despite that was a graduate of the Slobodka misnaged yeshiva. He was rabbi of a number of towns in Russia and the cities of Vitebsk and Moscow during the Soviet era. He was ararested by the NKVD during Stalin’s great purges and executed. His son-in-law, Rabbi Dov Beer Kresik was Rabbi of Karlevitz and a Chabad chassid. When he was 25, he was appointed Rabbi of Tola (Russia). After his father-in-law died, he succeeded in. He took part in the Kenes Rabbanei Russia and in the inaugural conference of Agudas Yisrael in Katowice. He expressed a consistent stance against the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. After the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 he was persecuted as a clergyman. On the Yom Kippur of 1933, before a closing prayer, he delivered a courageous sermon in the Great Synagogue of Moscow where he served as rabbi, in which he excited the Jews, who came to pray en masse, to be faithful to their religion and people, and it eventually cost him his life. A little over a year later, on the 2nd of Shvat 1938 he was arrested and taken to an unknown place. The family members did not know what happened to him. Only many years later, according to the documents revealed by the KGB, it was learned that their father had been accused of participating in an anti-revolutionary organization, and in a speedy trial, held on the 24th of Nisan 1938, was sentenced to death by shooting, and the next day was executed. Almost 30 years later, the family received the message about it along with the message about ‘purifying his name’ (rehabilitation). In 2008, the Jewish community of Moscow located his burial ground – the estate of the head of the Russian police, Genrich Yagoda in the Communarka, which was a burial site for those killed during Stalin’s purge.
Rabbi Dr. Hillel Medalia (1916 – 1977), left Russia in 1922. He received a Torah and general education, and received a doctorate in philosophy. He was one of the leaders of the Mizrahi movement in England, served as rabbi of Leeds (England), Dublin (Ireland) and Antwerp (Belgium). He published a book, which he called ‘Sheila’, which alludes to the name of his father – Shmaryahu Yehuda Leib, in conjunction with his name – Hillel. He also exalted the Shulchan Aruch with an English translation.
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