Rav Shmuel Sperber (1905-1985). Born in Brasov, Transylvania, where his father, Rav Dovid, was the rabbi. As a youth, Shmuel studied in the yeshivos of Oyber-Visheve, Hungary under the tutelage of Rav Eliezer Dovid Gruenwald and Rav Mendel Hager. After receiving semichah and marrying, Rav Sperber lived in Iasi, Romania. In 1931, after being attacked by anti-Semites, he decided to leave Romania and settle in England. There, he enrolled in law school at the University of London and also founded a yeshiva, Ohr Torah.
With the arrival in England of the large transports of German-Jewish children on the eve of the Holocaust, Rav Sperber became actively involved in comforting and educating them. At this same time, Rav Sperber became active in the Mizrachi movement, and he opened a camp in North Wales to prepare approximately 200 children for life on a kibbutz. Later he moved to Manchester, where he continued to work with youth, and then back to London to become an adjunct professor at the University of London. In 1971, Rav Sperber settled in Israel. One of his sons is the author of a multi-volume work on the history of minhagim / customs and of unusual ritual objects.
