"Application for Immigration Permit" Form - Signed by Rebbe Yehuda Leib Ashlag Author of the Sulam

"Application for Immigration Permit" Form - Signed by Rebbe Yehuda Leib Ashlag Author of the Sulam
Official printed form, "Application for Immigration Permit for a Relative Abroad", filled-in and signed by the applicant - Rebbe Yehuda Leib Ashlag (author of the Sulam on the Zohar). Bnei Brak, 1934.
In this document, R. Yehuda Leib Ashlag requests an immigration permit for the purpose of family reunification with his brother-in-law R. Shmuel Elchanan Blizinski of Warsaw, his wife and their three children. The form also contains information about R. Ashlag, who writes that he reached Eretz Israel on 16th Tishrei 1920 (second day of Sukkot), earns a livelihood as a rabbi with a monthly pay of thirty Palestine Pounds, and his property is "a house in Bnei Brak". In this document, he undertakes to provide for his relatives, "so that they should not become dependent on assistance from any organization".
R. Yehuda Leib Ashlag (1885-1955), an outstanding, holy and pure Torah scholar, a G-dly kabbalist and philosopher. He served as rabbi of Warsaw, and studied Kabbalah from its elders. He immigrated to Jerusalem in 1920, where he founded the Ittur Rabbanim yeshiva for study of the revealed parts of the Torah, apart from delivering many lectures on Kabbalah to elite Torah scholars. Over the years, a large group of disciples and Chassidim gathered around him, and he began serving as rebbe. He authored and published many books on Kabbalah, and is renowned for his magnum opuses: Talmud Eser HaSefirot and the Sulam commentary to the Zohar, reprinted until this day in dozens of editions distributed throughout the world. His teachings on Kabbalah paved a new and original way of understanding the writings of the Arizal and the Zohar.
In 1934-1940, R. Ashlag resided in the home he purchased in the Givat Rokeach neighborhood of the newly established moshava of Bnei Brak (today Ben Petachya st.), and set up his Beit Midrash there. During that time, the Sulam became acquainted with his neighbor the Chazon Ish, who immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1933 and also settled in the Givat Rokeach neighborhood of Bnei Brak. It is interesting to note that the biography of the Sulam (HaSulam, by R. Avraham Mordechai Gottlieb, Jerusalem, 1997) states that the Sulam lived in Bnei Brak from 1936-1940, whilst this document attests that he already moved to Bnei Brak in 1934. Another fact which this document discloses is the date of his immigration to Eretz Israel - 16th Tishrei 1920, and not 1921 as is recorded in the above-mentioned book (p. 59).
[1] leaf, official form (of the Central Agudath Israel). 34 cm. Good-fair condition. Wear and tears. Open tear to upper part of leaf. Folding marks and filing holes. Most of the form was presumably filled-in by R. Yehuda Leib Ashlag himself.