Rav Yosef Zusmanowitz was born in Yerushalayim in 1894, and henceforth earned the appellation “the Yerushalmi”
A 1937 edition of the journal Shaarei Tzion highlighted some important happenings in the ever-changing rabbinic world. From Palestine there were two major news items: Rav Yitzchok Isaac Herzog was named chief rabbi of the burgeoning yishuv, and Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank was chosen as chief rabbi of Yerushalayim. In America, the well-traveled Rav Yitzchok Dovid Essrig was appointed rabbi of Shaarei Tefillah in Brooklyn, and Rav Avraham Binyomin Zilberberg (great-grandfather of Rav Tzvi Meir Zilberberg) came from Warsaw to Pittsburgh, where he took the reins of several aligned kehillos.
Yet it was a seemingly mundane announcement at the bottom of the page that marked the end of a highly contested race for the rabbinate of Vilkomir, Lithuania, which had sat vacant following the passing of Rav Aryeh Leib Rubin.
Rav Yosef Zusmanowitz was born in Yerushalayim in 1894, and henceforth earned the appellation “the Yerushalmi.” He was the scion of the prestigious De Leon family. His father had come to Israel to represent the keren of the Minsk community. Following his studies in the local Eitz Chaim, he traveled to Lithuania, where he studied in the kibbutz of Rav Itzele Ponevezher. When the yeshivah fled south to Kharkov during World War I, he decided to join the Telz yeshivah. In 1921 he moved on to Slabodka, where he soon became a favorite of the rosh yeshivah Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein, who soon took him for his daughter Leah as a son-in-law .
With the opening of the Slabodka branch in Chevron in 1924, Rav Epstein’s twin positions as rosh yeshivah and rav of the town of Slabodka were vacated. Rav Yosef Zusmanowitz was already a popular young maggid shiur in the yeshivah, with the talmidim drawn in by his brilliance and charisma. Many saw him as the natural successor to his father-in-law, and Rav Moshe Mordechai himself made a return visit to Slabodka in 1925, ostensibly to secure his son-in-law’s position.
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