Letter handwritten and signed by R. Yaakov Yitzchok HaLevi Ruderman, dean of the Ner Israel yeshiva in Baltimore, United States. [Baltimore], Erev Rosh Hashanah 1973.

Sent to Jerusalem, addressed to Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, head of the Beit Din of London and president of the Vaad HaYeshivot in Eretz Israel, with a blessing for a Ketivah VaChatimah Tovah and for R. Abramsky to disseminate his novellae throughout the world, concluding with his signature. On the margins he adds a note on a donation to assist with the publication of Chazon Yechezkel on Tractate Pesachim.

R. Yaakov Yitzchok HaLevi Ruderman (1900-1987) was an extraordinary Torah scholar, one of the first and greatest American yeshiva deans, a leader of Orthodox Jewry and one of the heads of Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah in the United States. He was a leading disciple of the Alter of Slabodka, who shaped his character while studying in his youth at the Slabodka yeshiva, where he was known as "the prodigy of Dołhinów". His father was R. Yehudah Leib Ruderman, rabbi of Dołhinów (a follower of the Rebbe Rashab of Lubavitch). In 1924, he married the daughter of R. Sheftel Kramer (brother-in-law of R. Moshe Mordechai Epstein and R. Isser Zalman Meltzer; one of the founders and deans of the New Haven yeshiva – the first yeshiva in the United States established in the pure tradition of European yeshivas).

After printing his Avodat Levi in Kėdainiai in 1930, R. Ruderman immigrated to the USA and served as lecturer in the New Haven yeshiva. In 1933, he moved to Baltimore to serve as rabbi of the Tiferes Yisroel community, where he established the Ner Israel yeshiva, which to this day is one of the central yeshivas in the United States. From the 1950s, R. Ruderman was one of the heads of the American Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah, together with his colleagues R. Aharon Kotler, R. Moshe Feinstein, and R. Yaakov Kamenetsky. In 1956, along with the leading yeshiva deans, he absolutely prohibited any cooperation with the Reform and Conservative movements in American Judaism.

[1] leaf. Official stationery. 26.5 cm. Good condition. Folding marks.