Rabbi Aryeh Leib Rubin (1850–1936) served as Rabbi of Vilkomir, and was a distinguished disciple of Rabbi David Bonimovitz, Rabbi of Vidzh. After his teacher’s passing in 1887, he succeeded him in the Vidzh rabbinate, and later was appointed Rabbi of Vilkomir. (His renowned son-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman – later the famed Rabbi of Ponevezh and founder of the Ponevezh Yeshiva – succeeded him in Vidzh.)
Rabbi Rubin founded the Vilkomir Yeshiva and was among the leading Lithuanian rabbis active in the public and communal affairs of Orthodox Jewry in Lithuania before the Holocaust. His letters are exceedingly rare – and a signed semikhah is rarer still.
The ordination was conferred upon Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Yaakobovitz (1902–1956), a student of the “Beit HaTalmud Etz Chaim” Yeshiva in Częstochowa and of the Ostrovtza Rebbe, Rabbi Meir Yechiel HaLevi Halstock.
In 1922, he fled to Germany to avoid conscription into the Polish army and studied at Rabbi Moshe Schneider’s Yeshiva in Frankfurt. In 1925, while still a young man, he began delivering lectures at Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Breuer’s yeshiva.
In 1935, he immigrated to the Land of Israel on behalf of Rabbi Yosef Breuer, head of the Kehillat Adas Yeshurun Yeshiva in Frankfurt. In Jerusalem, he served as Rabbi of the “Horev” synagogue and congregation of German Jews and was among the founders of Yeshivat Kol Torah.
His son, Rabbi Yitzchak Yechiel Yaakobovitz, served as Chief Rabbi of Herzliya, and his son-in-law was Rabbi Avraham Erlanger, one of the leading rabbis of Kol Torah Yeshiva.
One leaf, approx. 28×22 cm, in Rabbi Rubin’s handwriting, with his signature and seal.
