הרב יהושע לייב דיסקין

Rav Moshe Yehoshua Yehudah Leib Diskin (10 Kislev 5579/1818–29 Tevet 5658/1898), the Maharil Diskin, called in Yerushalayim the Rav of Brisk, was among the great poskim of his generation and a leader of the holy city in his last decades. Born in Grodno to Rav Binyamin Diskin, rav of that city and later of Volkovisk and Lomza, he married Hinda Rachel, daughter of the rav of Volkovitz, received semichah at eighteen, and at twenty-five inherited his father’s rabbanut of Lomza. Over more than thirty years he served the great kehillot of Russia — Mezritch, Kovno, Lomza, Minsk, Shklov, and finally Brisk — and kept a lifelong bond with Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, who had learned under his father.

In Brisk a divorce dispute brought a libel upon him: money deposited with the rav was returned to the wife by the rebbetzin, who saw the husband’s demand as extortion, and he denounced the rav to the authorities. Rav Diskin was imprisoned, tried, and acquitted, but when a further accusation was framed against him he was smuggled with his family out of Russia. On 29 Tammuz 5637/1877 he reached Eretz Yisrael and settled in the Old City of Yerushalayim; a tradition tells that he fixed his windows facing Har HaBayit, so that thirty days should never pass without his seeing the makom haMikdash.

In Yerushalayim he was received as one of the heads of the Ashkenazi kehillah. He gave a daily shiur in gemara to a chaburah of avreichim and a shiur on the parsha every motzaei Shabbat, and stood unbending against every attempt to bring secular schooling into the city; the offer of the chief rabbinate of New York he turned down. After the petirah of his first wife he married Sarah Sonia, known as the Brisker Rebbetzin, whose nedunyah of forty thousand went to found in 5641/1881 the Diskin orphan home — grown from the needy children he had gathered into his own house — and the yeshiva Ohel Moshe, at whose head he stood. Among his talmidim were Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, the Rogatchover Rav Yosef Rosen, and his son Rav Yitzchak Yerucham Diskin.

He was niftar on motzaei Shabbat, 29 Tevet 5658/1898, and was buried on Har HaZeitim; his son Rav Yitzchak Yerucham came up to Eretz Yisrael to head the mosdot he left, and the Diskin orphan home carries his name in Yerushalayim to this day.