A nice find I sold this week was a lengthy letter in the handwriting of Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz (1862-1939), written to his son-in-law and Rebbe in his Yeshiva, Knesset Bet Yitzchak Kamenitz, Rabbi Yitzchak Turetz. This letter was written on the 11th of Sivan in 1933, during a period when Rabbi Yitzchak Turetz was looking to emigrate and find a rabbinic position and a safe haven for his family. Rav Turetz did indeed eventually emigrate and served as rabbi in the Bat Galim neighborhood in Haifa until his passing in 1967.
The letter is written on the letterhead of Rav Baruch Ber as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Knesses Beis Yitzchak-Kaminetz, founded originally in Slobodka, a suburb of Kovno, Lithuania. Following the devastation of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe during and after WWI, the Yeshiva was forced to relocate and found itself in Minsk, then Kremenchug, followed by Vilna. In 1926, the Yeshiva was finally able to find a permanent home, this time in Kamenitz, Poland. The period between the two wars was the height of the success of this famed Yeshiva, with 300-400 students in attendance, with students arriving from throughout Europe as well as America and Eretz Yisrael.
In 1939, escaping the Nazi invasion of Poland, Rav Baruch Ber, already in ill health, led the Yeshiva to the safe haven at the time of Vilna. Shortly after his arrival, he passed away, and tens of thousands attended his funeral in the main shul in Vilna. His final words were “I shall return in peace to my father’s home”. This was understood as a request to be buried near his father, in the old cemetery of Vilna, home to 70,000 Jewish graves and already full to capacity and thus closed for new burials. As respect for the great gadol’s final wish, a pathway in the cemetery was closed off to allow for room for his burial, he was thus the very last person to be buried in the Vilna cemetery before the Holocaust. The cemetery was devastated during the war and neglected in the decades following, leading to the exact burial site of Rav Baruch Ber to be forgotten. In 2012, following an extensive search, the grave of Rav Baruch Ber was rediscovered, miraculously intact.
