Postcard handwritten and signed by Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Lubachinsky, spiritual leader of the yeshiva found by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, addressed to Rabbi Hillel Witkind, a student of the Saba of Novhardok and head of the Tel Aviv Beit Yosef yeshiva.
In the letter, Rav Lubachinsky asks Rabbi Hillel to try to get a certificate for a bachur studying in the Baranowicze yeshiva. The letter was written in the practical and active language of the students of the Saba of Novhardok: “I therefore ask from the Rav Gaon shlita to do the mitzvah in shlemut and not to be negligent because they told me that the Rav Gaon shlita promised it and blessed is the one who says and does.”
Signature of the rabbi appears twice on either side of the postcard.
10x15cm. Light defect from where the postage stamp was torn away, good condition.
Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Lubachinsky (1872-1941) was the son of Rabbi Chaim Leib, the Av Beit Din of Baranowicze. When he reached the age of bachrut he was sent to complete his education at the Novhardok yeshiva, where he became a talmid muvhak of Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz, the Saba of Novardok, who later married him off to his daughter Marat Feiga Malka. He quickly began to manage the Saba’s yeshiva in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and dedicated himself to the education of boys. After his father’s death, in 1906, he succeeded his father in the rabbinate of Baranowicze. After some time and his father-in-law’s request, he left his position and gave it to his brother-in-law, Rabbi David Weizel so that he could return to Novhardok, where he served as the right-hand man of the Saba in establishing Novhardok yeshivot and educational institutions. In 1920 he moved from Russia to Poland together with great students of the Saba. He became mashgiach at the Ohel Torah yeshiva in Baranowicze, alongside Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman. He was known as an amazing pedagogue, enlivening hearts to Torah and Yirat Shamayim, and is considered one of the main figures of the yeshiva world in the generation before the Shoah. During the Shoah he fled to Kovna where he was murdered together with his students and the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman at the Seventh Fort in Kovna.
