Name Yechezkel Levenstein | Died 1974 | |
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Born 1895 Warsaw Education Radun Yeshiva, Kelm Talmud Torah | ||
Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein (Rav Yechezkel HaLevi Levenstein), known as Reb Chatzkel, (1895 - 18 Adar 1974), was the mashgiach ruchani of the Mir yeshiva, in Mir, Belarus and during the yeshiva's flight to Lithuania and on to Shanghai due to the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II. He was a leader of several yeshivas in Europe, America, and Israel, and raised several generations of Torah-observant Jewry. He was a disciple of R' Nachum Zev Ziv son of R' Simchah Zissel Broide.
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Biography
Rabbi Levenstein was born in Warsaw. His mother, Zlota, died when he was just five years old; his father, Reb Yehuda, subsequently remarried. He studied for 2 1/2 years in the yeshiva in Łomża, where he was imbued with mussar, then in Raduń Yeshiva under the Chofetz Chaim and the famous mashgiach Rav Yeruchom Levovitz, and finally in Kelm.
His rebbetzin, Chaya, was an orphan. He had "rejected glowing offers made to him by wealthy men who wanted him for their daughters" saying They'd "be unable to share a life of privation and restraint and of subsisting on the bare essentials."
Shanghai
News reached Shanghai Adar 5703 (1943), where the Mir spent the war years, of the murders of so many of Lithuanian Jewry. The eulogy of the martyrs by the mashgiach was published in a book, Mimizrach Shemesh.
Yeshivos
The Yeshivos that he founded or strongly influenced include: