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Shmarya Yehuda-Leib Medalia (Russian: Шмер-Лейб Янкелевич Медалье; 1872 – April 26, 1938) was the chief rabbi of Moscow between 1933 and 1938. He was sentenced to death and shot in 1938 during The Great Terror in the Soviet Union.
Biography
editShmarya Yehuda-Leib Yankelevich Medalia was born to a family of Lubavitcher Hasidim. He was an alumnus of the original Slabodka yeshiva.
Between 1899 and 1903, he served as the rabbi of Tula, Russia; and between 1905 and 1917, in Vitebsk. In 1910 he participated in the All-Russian Rabbinic Congress. In 1912, he took part in the Agudat Israel congress in Katowice, Poland. Between 1927 and 1931, he again served in Tula. In 1933, he received the appointment to serve as the rabbi of the Moscow Choral Synagogue.[citation needed] Rabbi Shmarya's son Hillel Medalie was Chief Rabbi of Antwerp.[citation needed]
In 1938, he was accused in court of communicating with Lubavitcher rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, and with German agents; also with corrupting the youth. Upon conviction, he was shot and buried in the common tomb in the Kommunarka shooting ground. He was posthumously exonerated after twenty years.[citation needed] Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, who held the post of the rabbi of Moscow in 1991, presented the Choral Synagogue with a parokhet or ark curtain, in memory of Rabbi Medalia.[citation needed]
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