טוביה לעווענשטיין

Rav Tuvia Lewenstein (15 Kislev 5624/1863–29 Tishrei 5713/1952) was a rav whose battles for Torah Judaism spanned three continents — born in Paramaribo in Suriname, where his father Rav Moshe Yehuda served as chief rabbi, and niftar ninety years later as the elder rav of Zurich. Orphaned young, he was raised in Holland, learned in the rabbinical seminary of Amsterdam, in the kollel of Kovno under Rav Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz, and in Berlin, where Rav Azriel Hildesheimer and Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffmann gave him semicha and he took a doctorate.

He served as chief rabbi of Leeuwarden and of The Hague, and in 5663/1903 was called to the chief rabbinate of Copenhagen — where his uncompromising war against intermarriage, invalid conversions and the innovations of the reformers set the community’s board against him. Dismissed in 5670/1910 despite a lifetime contract, he took the fight to Denmark’s highest court and won. From 5672/1912 he stood at the head of the separatist kehillah Adass Jeschurun of Zurich, which he led for nearly thirty years — defending the sanctity of Shabbat against calendar-reform schemes and, beside Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky, the shechitah itself against the bans of the era.

He was among the fathers of world Agudat Yisrael: after the First World War he presided at the Zurich conference that revived the movement, led its Swiss arm, and served in its world leadership in the years 5679–5683. After the churban of Europe, though past eighty, he returned to The Hague for a time to help rebuild the shattered kehillah of Holland. His son, Rav Meir Dovid Lewenstein, carried the family’s banner into the Knesset for Agudat Yisrael.