A Long Halachic Responsa, Full of the Sweetness of Torah, from Rabbi Aharon Bakst, Av Beit Din of Siauliai

A Long Halachic Responsa, Full of the Sweetness of Torah, from Rabbi Aharon Bakst, Av Beit Din of Siauliai
A responsa regarding an Aguna and incredibly scholarly explanations regarding the definitions of testimony about something which is going to be revealed in the future.
The responsa is structured carefully. At its center is a discussion on the Rambam's opinions of the aforementioned topic. Rabbi Bakst brings all of the laws from the Rambam which are connected to the topic, makes precise comments about the "golden language" of the Rambam and then brings an explanation which explains all that the Rambam said. According to his explanation on the words of the Rambam, the writer of the responsa comes to a ruling about the matter brought before him. Before us is an amazing combination of a high level of Yeshiva style learning with the ability to come to a practical ruling through this learning. A responsa which everyone who reads it immediately feels the sweetness of the Torah and the learning it contains.

Rabbi Aharon Yosef Bakst (1866-1941) was a product of the Lithuanian yeshivot and one of the greatest students of the Mussar movement. He learnt in Volozhin, in Slabodka and in the Talmud Torah of Kelm. He was the Rabbi of several congregations, the last of which was the congregation of Siauliai. His personality was full of genius and righteousness which made a great impression on all who saw him. He was a great public leader, one of the founder of "Agudas Yisrael" and a member of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah.
To our great sorrow, this wonderful righteous man was martyred together with all of his congregation, in the terrible Holocaust. The German army entered his city on 26.06.1941. Within a few days the police force was under German supervision. On 29.06.1941 the Rabbi of the city, Rabbi Aharon Bakst, his son-in-law the Dayan Isaac Rabinowitz and the Dayan Avraham Yitzchak Nachumovsky, and other Jews, were shot in the nearby Kuziai forest, after being forced to dig their own graves. In the first weeks of the Nazi occupation 1,000 of the 6,000 Jews were murdered in a similar way. The rest of the city's population was later murdered.
In Dov Shilanski (one of the survivors of the Siauliali Ghetto) is a picture of the Rabbi a few minutes before he was killed.

The beginning and end of the responsa before us were written by the Rabbi himself, as well as several handwritten corrections, but almost all of it was written by his son-in-law, who was also killed. They were beloved and pleasant in their lives and in their deaths did not part. The Rabbi explains that this is because his son-in-law's handwriting is more orderly and pleasant than his.
5.5 large pages, 27cm.
As far as we know, a letter from Rabbi Bakst has never previously been up for auction. Extremely rare!