Letter in the handwriting and signature of Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi the Rabbi of Shanghai, to Rabbi Yosef Baransky regarding validity of a Will who wort a Jew who converted his religion, Shanghai [1929].
The Gaon Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi [1891-1954]. An important rabbi of the Chabad followers in the city of Shanghai in the years 1926-1949. He was born to a distinctly Chabad family in the city of Cherkov and at the age of 15 moved to study at the Yeshiva of Tomchey Tmimim in the town of Lubavitch, where he stayed for about a year. He was ordained a rabbi, by Rabbi Zvi Tumarkin, and by his city rabbi, and his future father-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Eliezer Soloveitchik. During World War I he left the Soviet Union, and came to Shanghai, China, where he was asked by the local community to stay and serve as rabbi. By order of his rabbi, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, he accepted the offer and remained there for more than twenty years. In Shanghai, the rabbi headed the Yeshivat Tomchey Tmimim in the city and was the leader of the local Chabad community; At the same time, he took care of the needs of the hundreds of ultra-Orthodox refugees who were concentrated in the city, including students of the Yeshivat Chachmey Lublin and the Yeshiva of Mir. After the last refugees and locals left Shanghai, in 1949, he left his rabbinical city and moved to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He was then appointed chairman of the Shanghai Refugee Branch (under the organization of the Machaneh Israel). In 1950, he headed the 'Committee for the Preservation of Institutions', which was intended to stand by him in the management of Hasidic institutions. His son Rabbi Moshe gave the Rebbe as a gift the Torah scroll of his father, for the upliftment of his father's soul. He was buried in New York in the Montefiore Cemetery, on the plot of the Chabad Chassidim Association, next to the Lubavitcher Chabad tent.
Rabbi Simcha Alberg, writes about him in his book Einei Ha'Eda: "... For twenty-three years Rabbi Ashkenazi was a rabbi in Shanghai. In all those years he was engaged in Torah in holiness and purity, saints were his days and saints were his nights ... Infinity of worship of G-d was in every eighteenth prayer of his on weekdays. There was a holy Jew in Shanghai, and his name was Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi."
[1] leaf. Official stationery. 28x21 cm. Filing holes. Missing tear on the left without damaging text. Good condition.
