דוד לייקס

Rav David Leykes (c. 5459/1699–5559/1799) was the av beit din of Bar and one of the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov. He was the son of Rav Yisrael and his wife Leah, and it was after his mother that he was called David Leah’s; his father descended from the Maharal of Prague, Rav Yehuda Loew ben Betzalel. The Baal Shem Tov placed him at the head of his congregation. He was a man of simchah who carried good cheer to others, and he held to it in his own sorrows: when his first wife and children were niftar he turned away those who came to comfort him and kept his joy, and though he wept when the Baal Shem Tov was niftar he permitted himself only a brief mourning.

He sat as a dayan in the beit din of Bar under Rav Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka, and when Rav Yaakov left the city he was appointed av beit din in his place. His is the only haskamah in Iggeret HaKodesh of Rav Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, printed in 5554/1794, and pieces of his Torah appear in HaYachas MiChernobyl v’Ruzhin and in Tikunei HaZevach (Odessa 5642/1882).

He married twice, the second time when he was past seventy years old, to Chaya Shintzy; from that marriage came two sons and a daughter, Feiga, who in a second match married Rav Mordechai Twersky of Chernobyl. Their sons were the rebbes of the Chernobyl line — Rav Menachem Nachum of Makarov, Rav Avraham of Trisk, Rav David of Tolna, Rav Yitzchak of Skver and Rav Yochanan of Rachmastrivka. His son Rav Yosef Barar went up to Eretz Yisrael and settled in Tzfat.

Rav David was niftar at the age of one hundred. According to the wording of his matzeivah, he assured his descendants that whoever comes to daven at his kever on Rosh Chodesh Elul is promised a yeshuah. The cemetery where he lies was destroyed under Soviet rule; Rav Yisrael Meir Gabbai located the site and sought to raise a monument there but was refused permission by the local authorities, and today a sign on one of the buildings marks the place of his kever.