Sidebar

Contents

People
Jews born in or connected to Latvia

Search people

Culture
Cultural and social life of Latvian Jews

Geography
Towns and cities where Jews lived in Latvia

R. Yisrael Arye Leib son of R. Shalom HaKohen Shpitz

Grīva

Born in Lublin in 5669 (1909).1) He studied at the Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch yeshiva in Warsaw.

In 5692, the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Mohariatz) appointed him to head the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Vilna, and he served in this capacity until approximately the end of 5694.

He held the rabbinical position in the town of Preil, and in 5696 he was accepted as rabbi here in Griva and served as rabbi until the Second World War.

At the beginning of the Holocaust he was in the Riga ghetto. After the war, during the Soviet period, he served as rabbi in Riga; in the month of Kislev 5705 (November 1944) he began to engage in registering the religious community and Jewish life at the synagogue on Peitavas Street. In the month of Tevet 5706 (December 1945) he engaged in registering the synagogue on Marias Street 13 (Bazar Berg).

In 1946 he crossed the border from the Soviet Union, emigrated to the United States, and was rabbi of the congregation Lev Yisrael in Newark, New Jersey, for nearly 40 years.

For several years he stood at the head of the yeshiva Achei Temimim in Newark.2)

His name appears on the list submitted by the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Mohariatz) for obtaining visas to the United States at the beginning of the Second World War.3)

Author of the book Zekher Arye, responsa and novellae (no date indicated). Torah novellae from him were also printed in the collections HaMeor, issues Sivan–Tammuz 5741, Menachem Av–Elul 5741, Tishrei–Cheshvan 5742, and more.

He passed away on 18 Kislev 5744 (24 November 1983) in New Jersey, and was brought to rest at the Sanhedria Cemetery in Jerusalem.

Toldot Chabad bePolin, Lita veLatviya, in the index of persons, where he is noted. HaMeor, issues 112, 178, 262, 278. Archive of the KGB in Riga. My thanks to R. David Margolin for his assistance.

Latvia and Rabbis

1)
In all Chabad sources his name appears as Yisrael Leib (and also in Latvia: Batei Knesset VeRabbanim). But on his tombstone and in his book his name appears as Arye Leib.
2)
In Igrot Kodesh of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Mohariatz), vol. 10, p. 271 — a letter to him from the month of Marcheshvan 5710, in his capacity as director of the yeshiva in Newark. See also Lubavitch collection, year 5, booklet 1, p. 58. And in Igrot Kodesh of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Mohariatz), vol. 13, p. 266 (29 Nisan 5700), to the young scholar R. Zalman Dubin, may his blood be avenged (son of R. Mordechai Dubin): “How is your learning arranged… and with whom do you study? Certainly with our friend the rabbi Shpitz, may he live.”
3)
Toldot Chabad bePolin, Lita veLatviya, p. 378, no. 18.