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בעזהשי"ת an auction of "Selected special antiques"

Lot 85:

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A nice letter of Divrei Torah from Rabbi...

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Description

A nice letter of Divrei Torah from Rabbi Zalman Brann, Av Beit Din of Piła, written in his youth while studying at the Yeshiva of Lissa, to his teacher, "the esteemed and great rabbi, diligent and sharp, brilliant and knowledgeable in the chambers of Torah, " the Gaon Rabbi Raphael Gradenowitz, dayan in Rawicz.


Lissa, Friday, Erev Shabbat Parashat Bamidbar, 1832.


Rabbi Zalman Brann was born in Rawicz (Rawitsch) to his father, Rabbi Leib, in 1814. From 1828–1833, he studied in the Yeshiva of Lissa. From 1839, he served as a teacher and Maggid in Rawicz. In 1842, he became the Av Beit Din of Pleszew (Pleschen), in 1845 a dayan in Rawicz, and from 1853, the Av Beit Din of Piła (Schneidemühl), until his passing in 1903.

The Gaon Rabbi Raphael Gradenwitz was a dayan in the city of Rawicz in the Poznań region. He was born in 1799 to Rabbi Aharon, who was a Maggid in Rawicz, and the grandson of Rabbi Menachem Mendel, son of Rabbi Yosef, who served as the rabbi of Rawicz 1755–1792. Their family name, "Gradenwitz, " means "straight intellect, " and indeed, on the tombstone of one family member in the city, it is inscribed "a man of straight intellect."

Rabbi Raphael is mentioned in documents from 1846 and in an approbation from 1847 on the sefer Afikey Yehuda (Lemberg, 1863). He passed away in 1857. Rabbi Raphael authored seforim that remained in manuscript form, held by a grandson named Raphael. This grandson lived in Berlin and later emigrated to London, but since his death, the whereabouts of the manuscripts are unknown (Pozner, To the History of the Community of Rawicz, Jerusalem, 1962, p. 32). Rabbi Raphael’s son, Rabbi Menachem Yosef, who was ordained as a rabbi, also lived in Rawicz and passed away in 1913 (ibid., pp. 32–33).