Dead Sea Scrolls dispute

Odd piece of post war Israeli history - Bloch Archive

Here. As I understand it, the Mayor of Bnei Brak (Aharonowitz) desired to go to the Gerrer Rebbe (at that time the Beis Yisroel?) for Yomim Noraim, however the Rebbe refused to have anything to do with the "group of betrayers" (Poalei Agudas Yisrael whom Aharonowitz apparently supported). He sent the Ponevizher Rav an R' (Moshe?) Landau to speak to the Rebbe on his behalf bu to no avail.

Bloch collection - R' Moshe Feinstein

Here is the only letter of R' Moshe Feinstein in the LBI Bloch Archive. RMF is sending Bloch 5 dollars for his book מי נתן and thanking him for reminding his wife because RMF is busy and had forgotten.

Bloch claims to have had more extensive correspondence with R' Moshe in his pamphlet והיה מחניך קדוש against R' Moshe's p'sak on artificial insemination (See also Igros Moshe EH 2:11). Bloch asked R' Moshe if he permitted him to publish this pamphlet against him. R' Moshe's response is a classic and well worth reading. I hope to scan and place online next time I have access to the pamphlet..

Bloch archive - R' Aharon Kotler and the early years of BMG

On pg. 453 of Reel 5 of the Bloch archive we have the following two letters from the founder of Beth Midrash Govoha, R' Aharon Kotler. I placed the letters at Scribd here (Thanks to S. and Parshablog for explaining to me how to do this):


Kotler[1]
I think the 2nd letter is particularly meaningful. You hear a great deal about R' Aharon Kotler's mesiras nefesh in "bringing Torah to America" however it is nice to see this in his own word. You can see his great pride in the achievements of "his bachurim" and the great difficulty he had in raising funds to keep the Yeshiva going .

The first letter most likely involves one of R Bloch's many pamphlet against HaRav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin and like most gedolim of that generation (as I will show in future posts), R'Aharon Kotler would take none of Bloch's nonsense. This despite the fact that Bloch seems to have been a donor to the Yeshiva (as per the 2nd letter).

Strange anatomical discussion in Tosafos - Kerisus 7b

[Click to enlarge]