הרב ברוך בער ליבוביץ

Rav Boruch Dov Leibowitz (5626/1866–5 Kislev 5700/1939), known in every beit midrash as Reb Boruch Ber, was the author of the Birkat Shmuel and rosh yeshiva of Knesset Beit Yitzchak in Slabodka and Kamenitz. Born in Poldovtse, by Slutsk, he was known as an illui from childhood and was sent to learn in Volozhin, where he became the talmid muvhak of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk. To his rebbe he bound himself with his whole being — his sefarim labor again and again in the explanation of Rav Chaim’s Torah — and he would say that he could not understand how a man lives without a rebbe. He married Feiga, daughter of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Zimmerman, av beit din of Halusk, and succeeded his father-in-law as rav there.

In 5664/1904 he was appointed rosh yeshiva of Knesset Beit Yitzchak in Slabodka. The First World War drove the yeshiva into wandering — Minsk, Kremenchug, Vilna — until in 5686/1926 he set it down anew in Kamenitz, where hundreds of bachurim learned under him for thirteen years; in 1928 he traveled to America with his son-in-law Rav Reuven Grozovsky, later rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaath, to raise funds for the yeshiva. In his shiur he taught not answers alone but the craft itself — how a kushya is asked, how a terutz is built — and he held that Torah is not acquired by the rules of human logic: the mind must be shaped by the Torah, not the Torah by the mind. When he mentioned an amora or a rishon he would tremble — “der heiliger Rava,” “der heiliger Rashba.”

The Birkat Shmuel, named in memory of his father Reb Shmuel Dovid, stands in four chalakim on the sugyot of the Shas and holds many teachings of Rav Chaim written down nowhere else; it remains one of the sefarim learned b’iyun in yeshivot, with the written records of his shiurim by his talmidim — Shiurei Reb Boruch Ber and others — learned beside it. He also composed niggunim; in Minsk in the war years he taught them to his bachurim to strengthen their hearts, with the approval of Rav Chaim, who would review them.

In 1939 he fled with the yeshiva toward Vilna. Two close talmidim who stood by him told that some two hours before his petirah he said, “the Rebbe has come,” asked to say over a dvar Torah he had heard from Rav Chaim of Brisk, strained to rise to his feet — and with his rebbe’s Torah on his lips was niftar, on 5 Kislev 5700/1939. He was buried in the Zaretcha cemetery of Vilna, where his kever was identified anew in 2012; his son Rav Yaakov Moshe founded Yeshivat Kamenitz of Yerushalayim, which carries the yeshiva’s name to this day.