The tzaddik of Jerusalem
 
YOSSI ARON
WHEN one walks the streets of Jerusalem, one is well aware of the difference between the Old City — within the walls — and the new city that stretches far beyond them. However, the new city too has old quarters and among those dating back to the mid-19th century is Sha’arei Chessed.¬†
Now overshadowed by the Wolfsohn towers constructed in the 1970s, it is an area of old homes, courtyards and laneways, but is also now affected by gentrification. The inhabitants of earlier years would never have dreamt that their homes would become among the most desirable properties in 21st-century Jerusalem, and that their meagre dwellings would change hands for millions of dollars.
But enough about the physical surroundings. From a spiritual perspective, Sha’arei Chessed has long been a hub of traditional Yerushalmi life.¬†During the second half of the 20th century, its residents included the rav and posek of Jerusalem, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, whose rulings underpin that most popular manual of the laws of Shabbat, Shmirat Shabbat Kehilcheta.¬†
Also resident in that quarter was his late brother-in-law, the maggid Rav Sholom Schwadron, who would hold audiences spellbound when he spoke words of Torah. I well recall how hundreds would overflow from the Gra shul (named after the Gaon of Vilna) in Sha’arei Chessed on the afternoon of each Shabbat when Rosh Chodesh is declared, as he would speak for the last hour of the holy day.¬†But my reason for writing these lines relates to a third former resident of Sha’arei Chessed.
While walking its streets just two months ago, I noticed multiple copies of a large wall poster pasted onto walls and noticeboards announcing a gathering to mark the 40th anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Aryeh Levin -— the prisoners’ rabbi.¬†Who was this Rabbi of “Asirei Zion -— the Prisoners of Zion” -— whose biography by Simcha Raz is aptly entitled A Tzaddik in Our Time?¬†
He was small in stature, a typical resident of the then modest Sha’arei Chessed neighbourhood. Like so many he dressed in the traditional rabbinic garb, always wearing a long black coat with a shtriemel on Shabbat.¬†Yet he was no ordinary member of the Yerushalmi Orthodox community. To his funeral in 1969 came the president of the State of Israel (Zalman Shazar), the prime minister, cabinet members -— and Chassidic rebbes. Side-by-side with the heads of Jerusalem’s great yeshivot walked officers of the IDF and former members of the pre-state underground — as well as tens of thousands of other Jews.
And speaking at that funeral, Menachem Begin answered the oft asked question: “What is a tzaddik?”¬†Said the former fighter for the establishment of Israel, who later became its prime minister: “When a man appears and you watch his ways and actions carefully -— and you are enchanted you listen to his words, and they touch your heart you look at his eyes and they are clear and pure you touch his hand and are drawn to him magnetically — then you say in your heart ‘This is a tzaddik'”.
Born in Bialystock and having studied in poverty in the yeshivot of Volozhin and Slutsk, Reb Aryeh arrived in Jaffa in 1905 and immediately formed a close friendship with its then chief rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, whose philosophy he absorbed. He soon settled in Jerusalem, where from 1917 he served that venerable Jerusalem educational institution, Yeshivat Etz Chaim. 
But while that was his place of employment where he did so much for his young charges, he saw as his primary mission and task to visit the victims of misfortune. He went to the sick for whom medicine had no cure and whispered words of comfort.¬†He visited people in prison, and not only political prisoners under the British Mandate who were living up to an ideal for which they were willing to give -— and in some cases gave -— their lives.¬†
He inspired so many of those fighters of Lechi and Etzel that he visited, even as they were condemned. For some he was their final privileged contact with their families, to and from whom he smuggled letters and notes.¬†Personally observant or not, they had the ultimate respect for Reb Aryeh. And if he failed to achieve a commutation of their sentence, he mourned the passing of the “oley hagardom -— those “who mounted the gallows” -— as if they were his own sons.¬†May his memory be blessed among those of Zion and Israel for whom the people of Israel mourn.
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