Memory Lane: Rav Dovid Aaron Soloveitchik

The following entry appears in Hamo’or in 1961: “In Boro Park, following a lengthy illness of a number of years, Rav Dovid Aaron Soloveitchik, author of sefer Hadras Dovid, was niftar. He was from Eretz Hakodesh, and despite his illness from which he suffered a number of years, he sat al haTorah v’al ha’avodah, and left behind chidushei Torah. 

Yerushalayim of Yore 

From the writings of a brother-in-law, we learn that Rav Dovid Aaron was the son of Reb Beinish Blecher. His name was not really Blecher, only Soloveitchick (they were not Leviim, and thus unrelated to the Brisker dynasty). But given his work as a tinsmith, which means blecher in Yiddish, he went by that name, as was common in those days.

Rav Dovid Aaron would later write about his father—a true Yerushalmi from the old Yishuv—that he never left Eretz Yisroel in fifty years. The family had emigrated to Eretz Yisroel from Russia when young Dovid was a young boy of eight years old. 

Reb Beinish imbued his son with the same love for Torah, and young Dovid was among the metzuyanim of Yeshiva Toras Chaim . Among the great men by whose fire he was warmed was Rav Zorach Braverman—a talmid of the Netziv and Rav Nochum’ke of Horodna—whom he considered his rebbi muvhak. He also learned in the Beis Hamussar of Rav Naftoli Amsterdam  in ‘Strauss’ Courtyard,’ and under Rav Itzele Blazer (Peterburger).  

Rav Dovid Aaron married Cipa, the daughter of Reb Gershon Porush of the famed Yerushalmi family.   

An Emissary of the Yishuv 

World War I greatly affected the Yishuv of Eretz Yisroel and its institutions, and Rav Dovid Aaron –who struggled with his own parnassah—was sent to America as an emissary to help shore up some of institutions. He is credited with assisting these Yerushalmi institutions greatly. 

With time, he brought over his family, and many of them would marry upstanding Torah Yidden from America, while a number of his children remained in Eretz Yisroel. 

Even before the onset of his illness later in life, he experienced great suffering. His son, Yitzchok, died at a young age in the year 1948, and his daughter-in-law, the wife of his son Naftoli, likewise passed away at a young age. But through all of this, he continued learning with hasmodoh. 

For many years, he resided in Boro Park. With his residence being on 39th Street, it was a short walk to Cong Bnei Israel, and this is where he would make his place for learning and davening—spreading the light of his unique personality and Torah and mussar’dige approach to the mispalelim around him. 

Rav Dovid Aaron was niftar in Boro Park in the winter of 1961, and was buried on Har Hamenuchos.