Lot 343
Certificate of Appointment as Rabbi of Vornyany - For Rabbi Shlomo Heiman - Shevat 1926
Handwritten leaf, certificate of rabbinical appointment for R. Shlomo Heiman, with the signatures of over 40 rabbis and community members. Vornyany (a town near Vilna), Shevat 1926.
The certificate of appointment specifies the terms of the position: The community undertakes to accord him the monopoly on selling yeast and candles, and a salary of 2 dollars a week. The rabbi commits to delivering a class every morning and evening, and sermons on Shabbat HaGadol and Shabbat Teshuva.
On the verso, the signature of R. "Dov Ber Greizel", who writes that he served as rabbi of Vornyany, and blesses R. Shlomo Heiman "that he should merit to lead this holy community by the wellsprings of Torah and fear of G-d, and during his tenure the town should flourish and be elevated, and may we all merit to ascend speedily to our holy city".
R. Shlomo Heiman (ca. 1890-1945), leading Lithuanian yeshiva dean, was a student of the Radin yeshiva and a disciple of R. Baruch Ber Leibowitz in the Hlusk yeshiva. He served as lecturer in R. Baruch Ber’s yeshiva - Knesset Beit Yitzchak, when it relocated from Slabodka to Kremenchuk during WWI. He was then summoned by his teacher the Chafetz Chaim to the Smilavichy yeshiva founded by R. Elchanan Wasserman. After the Chafetz Chaim and his yeshivot returned to Lithuania, R. Shlomo went back to disseminating Torah in Kremenchuk (in the yeshiva of his brother-in-law, R. Eliezer Yitzchak Berman). In 1923, he was appointed lecturer in R. Elchanan Wasserman’s yeshiva in Baranovich. In 1926, he was invited to serve as rabbi of Vornyany (a town near Vilna), yet this appointment was never realized, since concurrently, R. Chaim Ozer summoned him to Vilna to head the Ramailes yeshiva. In 1935, he immigrated to the United States to lead the Torah Vodaath yeshiva, where he taught his disciples for the rest of his life.
During that time, he met Rebbe Rayatz of Lubavitch, who was very impressed with R. Shlomo’s refinement and glowing personality, and remarked to his associates that it is rare to meet such a person, who is "entirely Torah" (Yeshurun, VIII, p. 167). See also a letter from the Rayatz in Igrot Kodesh (VIII, 2,162), in which he addresses him with exceptional terms of friendship and veneration.
His novellae were published by R. Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz (his disciple in the Ramailes yeshiva), in the two volumes of Chiddushei R. Shlomo.
[1] leaf. 32 cm. Fair condition. Tears to folds (repaired with tape) and margins.
This certificate was published in the Yeshurun anthology (VIII, pp. 173-174), in the section Apiryon Shlomo - In the Memory of R. Shlomo Heiman. For further details on the rabbinical position he was offered in Vornyany, see ibid, pp. 157-159.
