Shlomo Wolbe - Life and Teaching Positions

Life and Teaching Positions

Shlomo (Wilhelm) Wolbe was raised in an irreligious Jewish home and received his education at the University of Berlin (1930–1933). During his university studies he became a baal teshuva through the efforts of the Orthodox Students Union V.A.D. (Vereinigung jüdischer Akademiker in Deutschland). After university he attended the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary. He continued to study at Rabbi Boczko's yeshiva in Montreux, Switzerland. He then attended the Mir yeshiva in Poland, where he became a student of the mashgiach ruchani, Rabbi Yeruchom Levovitz, and, then of Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein.

While in the Mir, Wolbe befriended a young man from Stockholm, Sweden, Bert Lehmann, son of Hans (Chaim) and Fannie Lehmann. During World War II, Wolbe, who was a German national, was in danger of deportation and could not follow the Mir yeshiva into Russia. Hans Lehmann invited Wolbe to stay with his family and be the Jewish teacher for his sons. Wolbe thus was able to spend the war years in neutral Sweden. While he was in Sweden, he functioned there as a rabbi. During the war he worked for the US-based Rescue Committee in coordination with Rabbi Benjamin Jakobson. At the end of the war he created a girls school for refugees in Lidingö. There, he wrote pamphlets on Judaism in Swedish and German.

He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1946 and studied at Yeshivas Lomzha in Petah Tikva. He then married the daughter of Rabbi Avraham Grodzinski, of the Slabodka yeshiva. Wolbe continued his studies at Kollel Toras Eretz Yisroel in Petach Tikva under Rabbi Yitzchok Katz. In 1948, Wolbe took over a small yeshiva belonging to a youth organization called Ezra. Two years later was joined by Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Shapiro of Brisk. The yeshiva was located in the small town of Be'er Yaakov, and was known as the Be'er Yaakov Yeshiva(he). Shapiro became the rosh yeshiva and Wolbe became the mashgiach ruchani. For more than 30 years until 1981 Wolbe served as the menahel ruchani of Yeshivas Be'er Yaakov.

Later, he served as mashgiach in the Lakewood Yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel and he then opened Yeshivas Givat Shaul specializing in mussar. During these post 1981 years Wolbe gave mussar talks in various yeshivas and to small groups. He also created many "mussar houses." The Bais Mussar was named with the support of Manfred Lehmann (son of Hans Lehmann) in memory of Chaim (Jamie) Lehmann, who had died in 1982. Prominent amongst his many students are Rabbi Uri Weisblaum and Rabbi Reuven Leuchter, all of whom have published works of Mussar, as well as Rabbi Benjie Jacoby, who continues to successfully outreach to North American university students, bringing thousands closer to Torah.