Pair of Historic Letters Handwritten by Rabbi Yosef Naftali Stern about a Pogrom

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Pair of Historic Letters Handwritten by Rabbi Yosef Naftali Stern about a Pogrom

Pair of important historic letters, handwritten by the gaon Rabbi Yosef Naftali Stern, rosh yeshivah of Pressburg and member of the Council of Torah Sages. The letters deal with the Beit Ya'akov movement in 1930s Krakow, and the pogrom that took place in Botoshan, Bukovina. Seret, 1933.

Two letters written on one sheet of paper, with different dates, addressed to the gaon Rabbi Yosef Nechemiah Korinetzer, av beit din of Krakow, where Beit Ya'akov was first established - the topic of this letter. Both letters are signed.

The first letter is a recommendation to accept an upright Jewish girl from the village of Botoshan in the Bukovina region, a daughter of the Chassid Rabbi Yuda Koppel Hess, a Vizhnitz Chassid, to study at the Beit Yaakov seminary in Krakow, Poland, founded by the pre-eminent educator, Sarah Schenirer. This would allow said young lady to one day serve as a principal in the Beit Ya'akov network in Bukovina.

Rabbi Yosef Naftali Stern of Seret, author of this letter of recommendation, scion of the Chatam Sofer, served as a member of the Vaad HaRabbanim of the Beit Ya'akov network in Bukovina, so this subject was close to his heart, hence the appeal to his relative from the Sofer family, the gaon Rabbi Yosef Nechemiah Korinetze.

In his letter, he notes the girl's father's distress. The father had been a naggid and a respected personality, but he had recently become impoverished, so this request includes help for supporting his daughter in addition to accepting her into the seminary.

Inter alia, he notes the spiritual path of Bukovina Jews, "The spirit of the times prevailing in our area, Bukovina, is well-known - every girl raised to mitzvahs from birth, is slowly but surely being swept away by a spirit foreign to us, and the only way to save a girl's spirituality is for her to leave her country and her homeland and for her to cleave to the youth of Beit Ya'akov, where she will be exposed to and study in the spirit of our pious mothers, and with the work of her hands, she will plant, with Hashem's help, a vineyard of Jewish girls on foundations of modesty and purity ..."

Rabbi Stern asks his relative, the rabbi of Krakow, whose wife is also a native of Krakow, to make efforts on the young lady's behalf and recommend her to the relevant people at Beit Ya'akov.

The second letter was written, as mentioned, to the same recipient, and the date that appears on it is about two months after the first letter. Rabbi Stern opens with "and this is in addition to what I wrote earlier" and he relates that during the preceding two months, since he wrote the first letter, "some hooligans arrived to loot and plunder all the Botashan Jews on a Shabbat night, as was reported by world press at the time, including the great rabbi mentioned above, and everything in his home was robbed and stolen." Rare written testimony about a European pogrom, (one of the last).

Refer to the Hebrew catalog text for a brief biography of the gaon Rabbi Yosef Naftali Stern.

[1] sheet of paper, divided into [2] leaves, 15x23 cm each, for a total of [3] written pages. 51 lines handwritten, signed and stamped by Rabbi Stern.

Fine condition. Fold mark. Minimal stains. Creases and small tears at the top of the leaf. Tears in the folds, without lack.