Rav Yehuda Leib Chasman—Or Yahel רב יהודה לייב חסמן — «אור יהל»
mashgiach of the Chevron yeshiva; a student of Kelm who taught musar in Telz, Shchuchin and Hebron
Born in Mir, he learned in Volozhin under the Netziv and Rabbi Chaim, and musar in Kelm under Rabbi Simcha Zissel. The combination is rare: Volozhin's sharpness of analysis and Kelm's demand upon oneself. In Telz he was mashgiach for several years, then became rabbi of Shchuchin and kept his own yeshiva there.
In 1926, ten years before his death, he was called as mashgiach to the Chevron yeshiva—Slabodka gone up to the Land of Israel. He lived through the pogrom of 1929, when twenty-four students were killed in Hebron, and moved with the yeshiva to Jerusalem. There he taught six more years—until his death in Kislev 1935.
His talks were recorded by students and published as Or Yahel. In them is Kelm: not to wait for inspiration but to work on oneself every day, as a craftsman works on a thing—and with it the conviction that man is created in the image, and his measure is great.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Or Yahel—the talks of Rav Yehuda Leib Chasman — his teaching as recorded by students
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, Volozhin and Kelm, Telz and Shchuchin, Hebron from 1926, death in 1935
Basis: documents and evidence.