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Letter of Rabbi Aharon Kotler – On the Aliyah of Religious Youth – Tamuz 1962

Opening: $800
Sold for: $3,500
Including buyer's premium

Lengthy letter (2 pages) handwritten and signed by R. Aharon Kotler, dean of the Lakewood yeshiva in the United States. Tamuz 1962.


Addressed to R. Yechezkel Abramsky. A historical letter relating to the Aliyah of Orthodox youth, which had been organized by the Pe'ilim organizations in an effort to spiritually save the immigrants from Morocco and Arab lands, when the secular establishment was acting to secularize the young immigrants in various ways and send them to kibbutzim and secular educational institutions. The letter names rabbis and activists worldwide whom R. Aharon enlisted in this battle for the souls of Moroccan and Mizrachi immigrants. Most of the letter relates to institutions for the immersion of new immigrants, including the Afula office for immigrants and the special airplane for Torah-observant immigrant youth used by Pe'ilim – funded by the Orthodox Jewish organizations from Europe and the United States.


R. Aharon Kotler (1892-1962), disciple of the Alter of Slabodka, and a prominent, outstanding Torah scholar (while he was still a young student, the Or Sameach predicted that he would be the "R. Akiva Eger" of the next generation). He was the son-in-law of R. Isser Zalman Meltzer. He served as lecturer and dean of the Slutsk yeshiva, and during World War I, he fled with the yeshiva students to Poland, reestablishing the yeshiva in Kletsk. He was one of the yeshiva deans closely associated with R. Chaim Ozer and the Chafetz Chaim. A founder of Vaad HaYeshivot and member of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah in Lithuania. During the Holocaust, he escaped to the United States, and established the famous Lakewood yeshiva in New Jersey (a yeshiva which revolutionized the yeshiva world in the United States, by inculcating its students with the passion and absolute devotion to Torah study which was typical of Lithuanian yeshivot). He was one of the heads of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah in the United States, and of Chinuch HaAtzma'i in Eretz Israel.
The present letter, written in the last months of R. Aharon's life, reveals his manifold involvement in the struggle for the young Mizrachi immigrants whose religious parents sent them off hoping they would receive a religious education. R. Aharon openly fought the secular Aliyah organizations who uprooted the young immigrants from their family traditions, going so far as to initiate an independent airline for immigration of religious youth in opposition to the Jewish Agency's dominance – an act which elicited controversy and anger among the establishment and secular parties in Israel.


Official stationery, 28 cm. Written on both sides, over 40 handwritten lines. Good-fair condition. Stains, including dampstains. Creases and folding marks.


PLEASE NOTE: Some lot descriptions were shortened in translation. For further information, please refer to the Hebrew text.

Letters by Important Rabbis and Manuscripts
Letters by Important Rabbis and Manuscripts