הרב שלמה וולבה

Rav Shlomo Wolbe (24 Sivan 5674/1914–16 Nisan 5765/2005), the mashgiach of Be’er Yaakov and author of Alei Shur, was seen in his last years as a final remnant of the mussar world that stood before the war — the yeshiva world called him simply “the Mashgiach.” Born in Berlin to an educated, non-observant home, he studied at the University of Berlin before returning fully to Torah through the union of Orthodox Jewish students. He learned in Frankfurt in the yeshiva of Rav Yosef Breuer, then in Montreux under Rav Yerachmiel Eliyahu Botchko, and in 5694/1934 arrived at the Mir in Poland, where he bound himself to the mashgiach Rav Yeruchom Levovitz. He merited only some two years under him before Rav Yeruchom’s petirah, yet saw himself all his life as continuing his derech, and later wrote the sefer HaAdam Bikar about him.

As a German national he could not flee eastward with the Mir when the war broke out. He spent the war years in neutral Sweden, teaching Torah in Stockholm and serving the rescue committee, through which he obtained thousands of visas from the Dutch consul for bnei yeshivot and moved funds to the Mir yeshiva in Shanghai; after the war he helped Rav Binyamin Zev Jacobson open a school on the island of Lidingö for a thousand girls freed from Ravensbrück. In Cheshvan 5707/1946 he went up to Eretz Yisrael, and married Rivka, daughter of Rav Avraham Grodzinski, the mashgiach of Slabodka.

In 5709/1949, after consulting the Chazon Ish, he founded the yeshiva of Be’er Yaakov; Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro soon joined as rosh yeshiva, and Rav Wolbe stood as its mashgiach for more than thirty years. After the Six-Day War he began speaking in kibbutzim and army bases — talks gathered in his Olam HaYedidut — and guided baalei teshuvah at Yeshivat Dvar Yerushalayim. In 5742/1982 he moved to Yerushalayim, founded the Beit HaMussar with a kollel to raise teachers of mussar, and later established Yeshivat Givat Shaul, while giving shmuessen at Kol Torah, Mir, Lakewood-Israel, and other yeshivot.

Alei Shur — its name formed from the initials of Shlomo and his wife Rivka — appeared in two volumes some twenty years apart: a foundational guide for the ben yeshiva in tefillah, learning, and the ordered building of the personality, teaching that a yeshiva is a place where one learns how to live. Beside it stand Zeriah UBinyan BeChinuch on raising children and his collected Igrot UChetavim. He was niftar on Chol HaMoed Pesach 5765 and was buried in the new rabbanim section of Har HaMenuchot; among his talmidim are the mashgichim Rav Uri Weissblum and Rav Reuven Leuchter.