הרב שמואל סלנט

Rav Shmuel Salant (2 Shevat 5576/1816–29 Av 5669/1909) was the rav of the Ashkenazi community of Yerushalayim for decades. Born near Bialystok to Rav Tzvi Hirsh, a town rav, he was orphaned young and learned in Keidan under Rav Tzemach Shapira — where he was called the iluy of Keidan — then under Rav Tzvi Hirsh Broida in Salant and in the Volozhin yeshiva, receiving semichah from Rav Avraham Abele, av beit din of Vilna, and from Rav Yaakov, rav of Karlin. He married Toiba, daughter of Rav Yosef Zundel of Salant, and took his father-in-law’s name.

His lungs were weak, and the doctors ordered a warm land; he turned the order into aliyah. Delayed for months in Constantinople on the way, he won the friendship of Sir Moses Montefiore, then traveling to answer the Damascus blood libel — and ever after, Montefiore would consult him on his tzedakah in Yerushalayim. He arrived in Adar 5601/1841 and joined his father-in-law, serving as av beit din of the Ashkenazim in the courtyard of the Churvah of Rav Yehudah HeChasid, where he lived all his years in a tiny apartment and refused every offer of better quarters. As a shadar he traveled through Lithuania and Poland in 5608–5611/1848–1851, and to Germany, Holland and England in 5620/1860 for the rebuilding of the Churvah shul; he also secured an equal division of the chalukah funds between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.

On his father-in-law’s petirah in 5625/1865 he became moreh horaah of the Ashkenazi community, and after the petirah of Rav Meir Auerbach its av beit din as well — though he liked to say he could never be removed from the rabbanut, since he had never been formally appointed to it. A posek of enormous bekiut with a leaning to be meikil, he answered from memory without opening a sefer, and was relied upon even in his last years, when he was nearly blind. With Rav Auerbach he founded the Vaad HaKlali uniting the kollelim of Yerushalayim; he was among the founders of Bikur Cholim hospital and a builder of the Etz Chaim yeshiva, and he encouraged settlement in the new neighborhoods outside the walls. In his years the Jewish population of Yerushalayim grew from some five thousand to thirty thousand, and he acted in harmony with the Rishon LeTzion Rav Yaakov Shaul Elyashar.

At his request the Aderet, Rav Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, came up to Yerushalayim in 5661/1901 to stand beside him, but was niftar before him in 5665/1905. Rav Salant was niftar on 29 Av 5669/1909 at ninety-three and was buried on Har HaZeitim; his matzeivah was hewn from a pillar that had stood in the Churvah courtyard where he lived. He left no sefarim of his own, but his pesakim and hanhagot — known above all through Rav Yechiel Michel Tucazinsky — were gathered generations later into Torat Rabbeinu Shmuel Salant; the Yerushalayim neighborhood Kiryat Shmuel carries his name.