Letter of "Ordination" by "Shlomo Ye'uda Elgazi" - Shlomo Friedlander, to Rabbi Ya'akov Moshe Zimmerman. [Without place or date, apparently around 1912].
Signatures at top of leaf and on margins "Shlomo Ye'uda Elgazi Chacham and Av Beit Din of Satu Mare Keramim".
Shlomo Yehuda Friedlander (1860-1924), born in Beshankovichy in Russia, a strange character of a Rabbi of the Enlightenment Movement. He immigrated to Hungary, settled in "Satu Mare Keramim", a suburb of Satu Mare and proclaimed himself rabbi of that place. He was accustomed to wander throughout Hungary and Galicia and give sermons. Renowned for the deceit of the "forged Yerushalmi", when he very skillfully copied all the sayings of the Yerushalmi Kodshim brought in the books of the Rishonim integrated with sayings of the Yerushalmi of other Sedarim, and then publicized that he found an ancient manuscript of the lost Yerushalmi. This forgery tricked many rabbis and researchers. As part of the pretense, he adopted a fake identity of a descendant of the Spanish Algazi family. After his deception was discovered, he was forced to wander far away to Russia, where he was less known, to give his sermons (see attached material). At that time, he apparently met Rabbi Ya'akov Zimmerman [a Lithuanian Torah genius], and gave him "ordination".
28 cm. Fair condition, stains, tears and wear. Pasted on paper for restoration.