The bulk of the package consists of RCK's stamp and postcard collection. It seems that most of the letters are written in Hungarian or Yiddish (some of the Yiddish is in Hebrew and some in Latin characters). Some letters are in English or Hebrew. Many of the rough letters are actually rough drafts that he wrote before writing the actual letter. Apparently, RCK lived in Eretz Yisroel as a bachelor from 1954-1958 in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Some of the "mysterious" letters actually involve Shidduchim, but they were written in a צנוע way so you have to really know what's going on to understand the letters.
In today's email, we will discuss some letters relating to a specific shidduch. On Dec. 18, 1955, RCK received a letter from somebody named Shmuel Lowinger from the Pagi/Sanhedria neighborhood in Jerusalem. He wrote to RCK that he has a shidduch to offer him. Two days later, on Dec. 20, 1955, RCK wrote a letter back to Mr. Lowinger asking for the name of the girl and more details about her. We have two drafts of this letter, as you can see in the attachment.
I wanted to some more research into the episode, so I simply picked up a Jerusalem phone book that we had around the house and looked up the name Shmuel Lowinger in the Sanhedria neighborhood -- and lo and behold -- I found somebody listed with that name living in that neighborhood. But I figured that he's probably already dead, because this story happened almost 70 years ago. I called the number, and a Filipino lady answered the phone. Turns out that Shmuel Lowinger actually died 23 years ago, but his wife (who is 90-something years old) is still alive, but had a stroke earlier this year. She put me in touch with Shmuel Lowinger's son Yaakov who lives in Ramot. I spoke to Yaakov Lowinger late last night and tried to figure out how RCK knew his father. I emailed Yaakov Lowinger a copy of the letters and he confirmed that it is indeed his father's handwriting!
As his son tells it, Shmuel Lowinger (originally from the town of Gur? in Hungary) was involved in community activism, and he was in charge of Kever Shimon Hatzadik at some point and was also involved in helping people get reparations after the war. Before the war, Shmuel Lowinger worked for the Agudas Yisroel office in Vienna and was involved in helping people make Aliyah to then-Palestine. As we know from the famous newspaper article about RCK, he also lived in Vienna where he worked for the Jewish Agency for Palestine, so it would seem that the two were likely acquainted with each other from their related work in Vienna.
Interestingly, now that we know that RCK lived in Israel for a few years in the 1950's, we can answer something that I had been wondering about for a while. My father has RCK's copy of Rabbi Eliyahu KiTov's ספר התודעה (by the way, two families who are descendants of his live on the same block as us) and it is a very early copy of the work, if not a first edition. I was wondering how/why somebody living in NY would have gotten hold of this random sefer from the Holy Land which had just come out and hadn't yet reached its popularity that it now enjoys. What seems most likely is that he got the sefer when he was living in Eretz Yisroel. It should also be noted that Rabbi Eliyahu KiTov and his brother-in-law Rabbi Alexander Zusia Friedman (author of the popular Maayana shel Torah) were both very involved in the Poelei Agudas Yisroel movement (whose roshei teivos is Pagi, and members of that movement were the ones who established the Pagi/Sanhedria neighborhood in Jerusalem).
Chag Kosher V'Sameach,
Reuven Chaim Klein
Beitar Illit, Israel
Author of: God versus Gods & Lashon HaKodesh
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