Two long letters from R. Shlomo David Kahana, "Father of the Agunot", rabbi of Warsaw and rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, [ca. 1946].
4 leaves (including some 8 written pages) on R. Kahana's official stationery. Scribal handwriting with R. Kahana's handwritten signatures. The letters deal with matters of releasing agunot and agunim among Holocaust survivors. Both letters were sent to R. Tzvi Hirsch Meisels, Rabbi of Vác (author of Responsa "Mekadshei HaShem"), who served after the Holocaust as rabbi of the Bergen-Belsen DP camp and Chief Rabbi of the British Occupation Zone in Germany. R. Meisels was responsible on behalf of the London rabbinate for supervising and ruling on matters of marriage and agunot (see his book "Binyan Tzvi", various correspondences on these topics with R. Abramsky, Av Beit Din of London, and various rabbis worldwide).
Most of the first letter deals with Torah matters regarding the laws of agunot. On the fourth page, R. Kahana writes about the worldwide efforts to release agunot from the Holocaust. He on his work on the issue of agunot in Poland and in Palestine, and expresses his opinion that each individual case of an agunah should be judged by a Beit Din on its own merits, and it is not appropriate to delay the matter and wait for a general ruling from the great rabbis of the generation on that particular issue.
In the second letter, dated Purim 1946, R. Kahana writes on the release of agunim (whose wives disappeared in the Holocaust). He asks R. Meisels to prepare an infrastructure for investigations that will assist in releasing the many agunot and agunim among Holocaust survivors.
R. Shlomo David Kahana, "Father of the Agunot" (1869-Kislev 1954), was among the rabbis of Warsaw, son-in-law and successor of R. Shmuel Zanvil Klepfish, one of the chief rabbis in Warsaw. After World War I, he was appointed by the Chief Rabbinate of Warsaw to oversee the complex issue of agunot. In this capacity, he worked tirelessly to release from their agunah status tens of thousands of women whose husbands, as soldiers in he war, were reported as missing in action and whose fates remained unknown. With the outbreak of World War II and the many casualties in Polish cities from enemy air raids (even before the mass extermination by the Nazis), R. Kahana foresaw what was coming and began preparing for the release of war agunot.
He later managed to escape to Palestine and was appointed rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem. During that period, he established in Jerusalem the "Office for Agunot Affairs" on behalf of the "Union of Rabbis from Poland" in Eretz Israel. Some of his many responsa were recently published in his book "Nechmat Shlomo" (published by Machon Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, 2022).
[4] leaves (some 8 written pages). Approx. 28 cm. Fair condition. Stains and wear. Folding marks. Tears along fold lines, affecting text.
PLEASE NOTE: Some lot descriptions were shortened in translation. For further information, please refer to the Hebrew text.
