אריה לייב שוחט

Rav Aryeh Leib Schochet (1845–6 Tevet 5689/1928) was a chassidic rav of Ukraine who ended his years in Brooklyn (USA) — one of the bearers of the old chassidic world to the new land. Born in Balta, a town warmed by the influence of Rebbe Refael of Bershad, he was a talmid of Rebbe Dovid Twersky of Tolna and of Rebbe Yitzchak Yoel Rabinowitz of Kantikoziva, and served as rav of Vradiivka in southern Ukraine.

His sefer preserves living memory of the chassidic world’s trials: he tells how his uncle, Reuven Wolf Segal, tended Rav Shmuel Avraham Abba Shapiro of Slavuta — grandson of Rebbe Pinchas of Koretz and co-owner of the famed Slavuta printing house — as he recovered from the fifteen hundred lashes of the Russian government in the infamous affair that sent the Slavuta brothers to Siberia.

In 1906, when his son Avraham was seized for the Russian army, he took his family to America, settling in Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York. There, in 1926, he published his Likkutim Yekarim — teachings and stories in the derech of chassidut, crowned with the haskamot of the rebbes of Tolna and Manestrich in America. He was niftar in his Brooklyn home on 6 Tevet 5689 and rests in Old Montefiore cemetery in Queens — among the first resting places of chassidic Torah on American soil.