Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin רבי יהושע לייב דיסקין
rabbi of Brisk and leader of Jerusalem's old community, founder of its orphanage
Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin served as rabbi of Łomża, Mezritch, Kovno and finally Brisk, one of the most honoured seats in Eastern Europe. He was famous for the sharpness of his mind and for refusing compromise; conflicts with the authorities and with the maskilim ended in a denunciation and imprisonment, and in 5637 he went up to the Land of Israel.
In Jerusalem he took no official post yet became the acknowledged head of the «old yishuv», the Ashkenazi community living on the charity of the diaspora. His word settled almost everything.
His great work was the orphanage he and his wife opened after the epidemics and famine of the 1880s, when missionary institutions were taking in and baptising children left without parents. Diskin gathered them to himself; the institution still operates in Jerusalem.
He was severe wherever he saw danger to the community: he opposed schools introducing secular subjects and settlements founded without regard for the agricultural laws of the Land, and took part in the sabbatical-year controversy of 5649.