Rav Aryeh Levine
The beloved Tzaddik of Yerushalayim, mashgiach of Yeshivas Eitz Chaim and the Father of the Prisoners, remembered for boundless chessed and humility.
Biography
Early years
Rav Aryeh Levine zt"l was born on 6 Nissan 5645 (22 March 1885) in Urla, near Bialystok, to Rav Binyomin Beinush and Ettel Levine. Two older sisters, Miriam and Faige, were born before him. His father gave him a love of Torah, and he was taught by local melamdim until the age of twelve.
He then left home for the great yeshivos of Slonim, Slutzk, Volozhin and Brisk, and was regarded as an outstanding and diligent talmid and an illuy (a brilliant young scholar). Despite his youth he was accepted at Volozhin, where he grew very close to his rebbi, Rav Chaim Berlin, who was later named Av Beis Din of Moscow and then of Yerushalayim.
In 1905, in the month of Adar, he came to live in Eretz Yisroel and learned at Yeshivas Toras Chaim. He received semichah from Rav Chaim Berlin, Rav Shmuel Salant and Rav Avrohom Yitzchok HaKohen Kook. Soon after settling in Yerushalayim he married Tzipora Chana, daughter of Rav Dovid Shapira. Rav Zvi Pesach Frank, Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim, was his brother-in-law.
Torah and leadership
In 1925 Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer was appointed to head Yeshivas Eitz Chaim, and Rav Aryeh was named its mashgiach (spiritual supervisor). He held that post for many decades, and thousands of boys were raised by him as by a loving father. His modest ways and his warmth stayed with them for life.
Rav Aryeh never raised his voice at a child. He would approach a boy quietly and speak to his heart, and the boys, who could not bear to hurt a mashgiach they loved so much, learned with diligence to give him nachas. He treated his talmidim with the respect due to adults.
Once the State of Israel had been established, Rav Aryeh founded the yeshiva that bears his name, Yeshivas Beis Aryeh. He designated as its roshei yeshiva his son-in-law, Rav Eliezer Platinsky, and Rav Noson Zvi Finkel, a grandson of the Alter of Slabodka. The yeshiva still has a few dozen talmidim, among them well-known rabbanim and poskim.
Father of the Prisoners
Rav Aryeh became known to all as the Father of the Prisoners. During the British Mandate he regularly visited the Jewish prisoners held in the Central Prison in the Russian Compound in Yerushalayim, most of them members of the Haganah, Irgun, Lehi or Palmach. They had been jailed on charges such as possessing arms. He had filled this role informally since 1927. In 1931, at the request of the Mandate authorities, Rav Kook appointed him official Jewish prison chaplain, and Rav Aryeh agreed, provided that he be paid nothing.
He prayed with the prisoners, brought them letters and greetings from home, and relayed their messages to their families. On Shabbos and Yom Tov, Room 29 of the prison, now the Museum of the Underground Prisoners, served as a shul. The prisoners were moved by his warmth and sincerity and by how respectfully he treated them. Mattityahu Shmuelevitz, who had been sentenced to death and then given life imprisonment, wrote to a friend that he was grateful above all to a dear Jew who had stormed heaven and earth on his behalf and had brought him closer to his Maker in those fateful days. The rav could not take the prisoners out into the free world, he wrote, yet he continually carried the outside world in to them.
The hardest cases were the prisoners condemned to death. Rav Aryeh did everything he could to appeal the sentences and lessen the punishment. It is told that he once flung himself before the High Commissioner's moving car in order to present a petition. Of those he could not save, Dov Groner, Moshe Barazani and Meir Feinstein, he said that none of us can imagine how high the spiritual level of these martyrs is.
In 1965 (5725), on his eightieth birthday, veterans of the underground held a gathering in his honor in the courtyard of the old prison. He said that the value of the gathering was that it had brought friends together, and that it was especially moving to see the families, and the small children whom he had always loved. He added that he did not know whether he would merit to be with them again, and asked only that they tell their children that there once lived an old Jew in Yerushalayim who loved them dearly. He wept, and of the thousands who were there, not one eye stayed dry.
Following the War of Independence, eighteen months after the men of the convoy of 35 fell in battle, their bodies were brought back to Eretz Yisroel. The Military Rabbinate could not identify twelve of them with certainty. After consulting Rav Zvi Pesach Frank, Rav Aryeh was given the task of drawing the Goral HaGra (the Gra's Lot), performed with a special Tanach attributed to the Vilna Gaon. The bereaved families, the IDF and the Ministry of Defense all accepted the outcome as final.
Chessed and humility
Rav Aryeh visited the sick every Friday in the hospitals of Yerushalayim, especially at Bikur Cholim. He would first speak with the nurses to learn which patients never had visitors, and then sit for hours at their beds, holding a hand and offering words of cheer. He also visited the patients of the leper hospitals in Yerushalayim and Bethlehem, where the patients were mostly Arabs. His wife cooked regularly for them, and he carried the food to the hospital.
He was humble toward everyone and saw only the good in people, even those for whom others had few kind words. He was always occupied with charity and with helping the poor. He lived simply in a tiny apartment in the Mishkenot Yisrael neighborhood, and firmly turned down every offer from neighbors and friends to move him somewhere larger. He explained that a person is taken from his home to the cemetery at the end of a long life, and his room was not much bigger than where he would go.
For many years he lived on Har Grizim Street in Mishkanot, Yerushalayim, which was renamed in his memory after his passing.
Later years and passing
Rav Aryeh passed away on 9 Nissan 5729 (28 March 1969), the eve of Shabbos Hagadol, at the Hadassah Ein Karem Medical Center in Yerushalayim. He was buried after chatzos. In accordance with his last request, no hespedim were given at the funeral, both because of the sanctity of the approaching Shabbos and because hespedim are not said during Nissan.
He was laid to rest in the Sanhedria Cemetery in Yerushalayim, together with his wife Tzipora. His tombstone carries his request that anyone who comes to his kever say that he firmly believes in the resurrection of the dead when the time comes that the Creator wills it.
Legacy
Yeshivas Beis Aryeh still stands in the courtyard of his home among the narrow alleys of Yerushalayim, drawing scholars and visitors alike. Thousands of former talmidim of Eitz Chaim carry the memory of a mashgiach who led with love, and Jews still remember Rav Aryeh as the tzaddik who saw only good in others.
Stories
The Chocolate Pudding
An educator who later held a senior position in an Israeli school system once told of his childhood in a Yerushalayim institution many decades earlier. The food was meager and he was always hungry. One day chocolate pudding was served. He took his portion, ate it quickly, and went back for more, but the server refused him with a harsh remark. Angry and frustrated, he overturned the pot and spilled the pudding on the ground.
He was beaten, scolded and humiliated in front of everyone, and told that whether he would be expelled would be decided the next day by Reb Aryeh, the institution's mashgiach. He spent the night weeping.
In the morning Reb Aryeh asked him to sit beside him and asked whether he had spilled the pot. The boy admitted it. Reb Aryeh asked if he would ever do it again, and the boy promised he would not. Then Reb Aryeh asked, “Do you like chocolate pudding?” “Yes,” said the boy. “So do I,” said Reb Aryeh. “I have two containers here, so let us sit and eat them together.”
The educator said that in that moment he realized what being a Torah Jew truly means.
The Boy Who Waited
One day a boy came to Reb Aryeh at noon with a question. Reb Aryeh was occupied and told him to wait. Hours passed, and Reb Aryeh, having forgotten, never came.
That night, when he reached home, Reb Aryeh remembered the boy and what he had told him. He could find no peace. “Who knows what pain the boy felt,” he said, “because I did not come to him?” He gave himself no rest until he went out to find the boy and hear what he had wanted to say.
People were surprised to see the elderly mashgiach walking through a neighborhood, asking where a certain boy lived. Only later did they learn the reason.
My Wife's Foot
Reb Aryeh lived by the teaching that a man should love his wife as himself and honor her more than himself.
Once his wife felt pain in her foot, and the two went to the doctor together. The doctor asked how he could help, and Reb Aryeh replied with complete sincerity that his wife's foot was hurting the two of them.
The Weeping Woman at the Kosel
It is told that Reb Aryeh's visits to the lepers began at the Kosel. He found a woman weeping bitterly and asked what troubled her. She told him her child had an incurable illness and was shut away in the leper hospital in Yerushalayim.
He decided at once to go and visit the child. When he walked in, every patient began to cry, because for years no visitor from the outside world had come to them. From then on he returned again and again.
Why They Came at Night
Reb Aryeh usually did not go to bed until two in the morning. He sat up at home helping to restore peace between husbands and wives, listening to their quarrels and offering advice and solutions.
Once he was asked why he did not tell such couples to come earlier in the evening. He replied that couples in trouble fear for their reputations, so they prefer to arrive quietly, late at night.
Family & talmidim
Teachers: Rav Chaim Berlin, Rav Shmuel Salant, Rav Avrohom Yitzchok HaKohen Kook
Children: A daughter, wife of Rav Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv, grandson of Rav Shlomo Eliyashiv, A daughter, wife of Rav Eliezer Platinsky