Yehuda Leib Tsirelson

Yehuda Leib Tsirelson (1859, Kozelets, Chernihiv Oblast – 1941, Kishinev, Soviet Union) was the Chief Rabbi of Bessarabia, a member of the Romanian parliament, and a prominent Jewish leader and posek.

Yehuda Leib was born in 1859 to the Rabbi of Kozelets, Moishe Chayim. He was considered a prodigy at a very young age and became the Rabbi of Priluki when he was only nineteen. During that time he began writing for various periodicals in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian. His articles dealt mainly with ongoing Jewish issues, mostly of a political nature. In 1898 he participated in the first all-Russian Zionist conference in Warsaw. At first he supported the Mizrakhi movement and required from secular Zionist letting the religious delegates decide on educational programs of the whole Zionist movement, but later he became disappointed in religious and secular Zionism and finally left the movement becoming less moderate.

In 1908 he was appointed religious and crown rabbi of Kishinev. In 1911 he was one of the signatories of a letter by 300 prominent Russian Rabbis against the antisemitic Beilis affair case. That same year he received the title of honorable citizen of Russian empire. In 1912 he was among a core group of Jewish leaders and Rabbis who laid the foundation for the Agudat Israel movement. In 1918 Bessarabia became part of Romania and Rabbi Tsirelson was nominated Chief Rabbi of the whole Bessarabia. He developed there a Jewish educational system, beginning from kindergarten and ending with yeshiva. Many prominent rabbis, including future Rabbis of Rybnitsa (Rabbi Chaim Zanvl Abramowitz) and Bohush, studied in his yeshiva.

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