Avodath Levi [novellae on Talmudic Orders of Kodashim and Toharoth]

RUDERMAN, JACOB ISAAC HALEVI

Keidan (Lithuania)

1930

The R. Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) Copy. Inscribed and signed by the Author in Hebrew: "A gift to the rabbi, the genius, treasury of Torah and understanding, a prince in Israel, R. Meir Berlin. From his friend, the author, Jacob Isaac Ruderman, 16th Sivan, 1931, Cleveland, Ohio. Also with R. Ruderman's personal stamp

In 1930, R. Jacob Isaac Ruderman (1901-1987), a graduate of the Slabodka Yeshiva, arrived in New Haven, Connecticut to take up the position of lecturer in the Yeshivah founded a few years earlier by Rabbi J.H.Levenberg. There, R. Ruderman joined his father-in-law R. Sheftel Kramer, mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor) of the Yeshivah. However, shortly after, Levenberg accepted the Rabbinate of Cleveland, moving the Yeshivah with him. As a result, two years later, in 1933, Rabbi Ruderman founded his own independent Yeshivah in Baltimore, which he named "Ner Israel," today one of the premier institutions of higher Jewish learning in the United States. See J. Gurock ed., American Jewish History, Vol. V (1998) p. 50; EJ, Vol. XIV, col. 379; N.Z. Friedmann, Otzar Harabanim, no. 11376. R. Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) (1880-1949), was the son of the Dean of the Volozhin Yeshivah, Rabbi Naphtali Tzvi Judah Berlin (Netzi"v) (1817-1893), and leader of the Mizrachi Movement. Bar-Ilan University was named after him. See EJ, Vol. IV, cols. 224-25; 660-62