הרב אהרן בקשט

Rav Aharon Yosef Bakst (d. 16 Tammuz 5701/1941), among the important rabbanim of the mussar movement, was the last rav of Shavel in Lita, murdered al kiddush Hashem in the first days of the Nazi occupation. Born in Ivye, an only child, he learned in Volozhin, in Slabodka, and in the Talmud Torah of Kelm, where he became one of the close talmidim of the Alter of Kelm, Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv.

His rabbanut was a chain of building: from Yasvogola near Shavel to Semiatich, then deep into Russia as rav of Tsaritsyn — the city later called Stalingrad — where he founded a framework for young men that left a lasting mark; then Shadova in Lita. The upheavals of the First World War drove him through Ivye and Novozybkov to Poltava, where he served as rav from 1916. Around 5680 he escaped Soviet Russia back to Lita, serving in Suvalk — where he founded a yeshiva for exceptional talmidim — and later in Lomza; in every city where he sat as rav, he built a yeshiva. He was among the founders of Agudat Yisrael and of its Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah, and when the Alter of Slabodka offered him the head of Yeshivat Knesset Yisrael, he declined, and the position passed to Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein.

In 5690 he was chosen as rav of Shavel, and it is with that final kehillah that his name is joined. When the Nazis took the city he was seized and murdered, together with his son-in-law and other rabbanim, on 16 Tammuz 5701. His Torah survives in Torat Aharon, responsa and sugya-essays, and Lev Aharon, his maamarim in mussar and hashkafah, both printed in Yerushalayim decades after his death.