צבי הירשל לוין

Rav Tzvi Hirsch Levin (5481/1721–5 Elul 5560/1800), known in England as Hart Lyon and in the sefarim as Rav Tzvi Hirsh Berlin, was among the great rabbanim of Ashkenaz — chief rabbi of Great Britain and, for nearly three decades, rav of Berlin in the very years the Haskalah rose there. He was born in Risha into the empire of the Chacham Tzvi‘s family: son of Rav Aryeh Leib, later rav of Amsterdam, and of Miriam, the Chacham Tzvi’s daughter — making him a nephew of the Yaavetz, whose side he took in the great machloket of the age, and brother of Rav Shaul Lowenstam of Amsterdam, the Binyan Ariel.

In 5516/1756 he was called to the Great Synagogue of London as chief rabbi of Britain’s Ashkenazim; after some years, finding the young community below the standard of yirat Shamayim he demanded, he left — serving Halberstadt and Mannheim before Berlin crowned him in 5532/1772. There he stood where the fire was hottest. His derech against the rising Haskalah was firm but measured: himself learned in the sciences and in dikduk — his hagahot on the Talmud are printed in the Vilna Shas — he could meet the maskilim on their ground while insisting that all such knowledge stands subordinate to Torah. When the Wessely controversy broke over Jewish education and the gedolei hador pressed for war, the crushing pressures from both sides drove him to announce his departure for Eretz Yisrael — and the kehillah’s leaders begged him back, and he led Berlin another eighteen years until his passing.

He was niftar on 5 Elul 5560. His son Rav Shlomo Hirschell returned to the seat his father had left, becoming chief rabbi of the British Empire — the house of the Chacham Tzvi serving a third generation of kehillot across Europe.