Bidspirit auction | London Rabbi Joshua (Shiya) Szpetman

London Rabbi Joshua (Shiya) Szpetman - Signed book 1957. - Rabbi Joshua (Shiya) Szpetman (pronounced Shpetman). He was a native of Lublin, in Poland, who had already been a Rosh Yeshiva (Head of a Rabbinical Academy) when he emigrated to London on the 1930s. He was the “red rabbi”, writer, author, orator, and preacher, who was, for 35 years, the Rabbi of the Nelson Street Sefardishe Synagogue in the East End of London. He was a regular contributor to the London Yiddish daily newspaper Di Zeit, and also to A. N. Stencl’s monthly Yiddish literary magazine Loshn un Lebn. His background was Chassidic and he was a follower of the author and thinker Hillel Zeitlin, who had translated the Zohar into Yiddish.