הרב חיים שמואלביץ

Rav Chaim Leib Shmulevitz (2 Tishrei 5663/1902–3 Teves 5739/1979) carried the yeshiva of Mir on his shoulders through its exile and rebuilding, and stood at its head in Yerushalayim. Born in Kovno on Rosh Hashanah to Rav Refoel Alter Shmulevitz — later rosh yeshiva in Stutchin and Grodno — and to Ettel, daughter of Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz, the Alter of Novardok, he was orphaned of both parents as a youth. In Grodno he became bound to Rav Shimon Shkop, who recognized the iluy and had him saying shiur to the younger talmidim at eighteen; four years under Rav Shimon shaped his derech in learning for life. In 5685 (1925) he came to Mir, where he was known as the iluy of Stutchin, and the rosh yeshiva, Rav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, chose him as a son-in-law; he married Chana Miriam Finkel in 5690 and was soon saying shiur in the yeshiva — shiurim famed for weaving twenty and thirty sources from every corner of Shas into a single foundation.

When the war drove Mir into galut — Vilna, Keidan, and by way of the Sugihara visas to Kobe and Shanghai — Rav Chaim, with the mashgiach Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, carried the yeshiva through five and a half years of exile, the rosh yeshiva having been stranded in Eretz Yisrael. In Shanghai he bore the material needs not only of Mir but of all the exiled yeshivot in the city. Offered American visas for himself and his family alone, he refused: he would leave only when every talmid had his. In 1947 the yeshiva crossed to America as one body, and half a year later Rav Chaim joined his father-in-law in building Yeshivat Mir in Yerushalayim, standing at its head from 5725 after Rav Eliezer Yehuda’s passing.

He wrote down all of his Torah, leaving thousands of pages of chiddushim across every masechta of Shas, printed in the volumes of Shaarei Chaim; his shmuessen, printed as Sichot Mussar, are learned as a classic of penetrating insight into the soul. When he lay gravely ill after Sukkot 5739, Rav Moshe Feinstein said that the world rested upon Reb Chaim’s shoulders. He was niftar on 3 Teves 5739; some hundred thousand accompanied him to Har HaMenuchot, and his son-in-law Rav Nochum Partzovitz succeeded him at the head of the yeshiva.