Searchers recently found the tombstone of Rabbi Shaul Yehudah-Lieb Hacohen Liebin, a leader in the Chabad-chassidic community of Hevron who passed away 118 years ago. Over the course of time, the memory of his exact burial place was lost.
The tomb was found on the Mount of Olives (Har Hazeitim) in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Leibin's descendants will gather Friday to hold a memorial service at his grave. Following the service, they will tell stories about his life, and about the Chabad community of Hevron.
Rabbi Liebin served as a rabbi in several communities in Ukraine. In 1887, he came to the land of Israel and settled in Hevron, where he was appointed to lead the Ashkenazi Jewish community in the city, and to join the Beit Din (religious court). In his later years, he moved to Jerusalem.
The Jewish community of Hevron continued to flourish after Rabbi Liebin left, until Jews were expelled from the city in the brutal 1929 pogrom, in which local Arabs murdered 67 of their Jewish neighbors and maimed many more. Most survived, some with the help of Arab families; the British army then forced the survivors out of the city.
Jews returned to Hevron only after the Six Day War, when the city was reunited with the rest of Israel after 19 years of Jordanian rule. The Jewish community now numbers several hundred, with thousands more living in neighboring Kiryat Arba.