"Send Help to Establish this Yeshivah in Ponovezh with Three Hundred Students, to Increase Torah and Glorify it" - ...

"Send Help to Establish this Yeshivah in Ponovezh with Three Hundred Students, to Increase Torah and Glorify it" - Unique Letter from the Ponovezher Rebbe while Fundraising in the United States. Cleveland, 1929

Unique letter from the gaon Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, rav av beit din and rosh yeshivah of Ponovezh, while he was abroad in the United States fundraising for his yeshivah and his other educational institutions in Ponovezh, Lithuania, to Rabbi Eliezer Silver, president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada.

This letter was written during his travels through American cities, in Cleveland, while raising funds for his yeshivah in Ponovezh.

He specifies the huge debts accrued due to the construction of a permanent building for his institutions, the yeshivah and other schools in Ponovezh, as well as the chillul Hashem that could occur should he not be able to keep up with the payments.

Rabbi Kahaneman describes the deficient American Jewish perspective about yeshivahs, "it is a pity that my greatest friends and loved ones, the greatest rabbis of this country are unaware of the true situation of the yeshivah and the value of its activities ..."

Rabbi Kahaneman also mentions the situation in the Land if Israel at the time - the 1929 pogroms and the murder of members of the yeshivah in Chevron, may their blood be avenged.

He writes with broken-heartedness and anticipation, "I am already tired and worn out from the toil, and my eyes are raised to Heaven, from where help will certainly come, to establish this sacred yeshivah in Ponovezh with three hundred students, may the number only grow, to increase Torah and glorify it ..."

He concludes with words of consolation and personal hope "My prayers to Heaven to be written and sealed for a good year, to see this House of G-d in Ponovezh built for His honor, and to return to my place and position to sit in the house of Hashem all the days of my life."

Refer to the Hebrew catalog text for a brief biography of Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman.

[1] leaf, written on both sides. Official stationery. 28x21.5 cm. 31 lines. Entirely in his hand and with his signature. Fold marks. Four tears on the sides and the top of the leaf - without lack in the text. Fine condition.