Yaakov Feitman is a rabbi, speaker and author [1] who helped build and expand congregations in more than one geographic region and was the founding principal [2] of three schools. [3]
Feitman was born in 1948 in a Displaced Persons camp to Holocaust survivors. [4] [ page needed ]
He received rabbinical ordination from rabbis Moshe Feinstein and Yitzchak Hutner. [5]
Feitman is a past president of the Young Israel Council of Rabbis, has been a Scholar-in-Residence [6] all over the world and spoken at OU, Torah Umesorah and Agudah conventions. [7]
Presently the rabbi of the "Red Shul", Kehillas Bais Yehuda Tzvi in Cedarhurst, New York, he has held pulpits in Cleveland, Ohio and Teaneck, NJ.
In 1983, moved from Brooklyn to become the rabbi of Young Israel of Cleveland, [8] which at the time [4] [ page needed ] had congregations in Cleveland Heights and South Euclid. Feitman divided his time between and duties between the two locations and helped guide these congregants, over a period of years, through this transition. Later he helped with another transition in what became the Young Israel of Beachwood, located in a Cleveland-suburb. [9]
Those years involved not only religious matters but dealing with extensive problems regarding land use and discrimination [10] . [11]
Yitzchak Hutner, also known as Isaac Hutner, was an American Orthodox rabbi and rosh yeshiva (dean).
Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin or Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin is an American Haredi Lithuanian-type boys' and men's yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York.
Rebbetzin Bruria David was an American-born Israeli Haredi Jewish rebbetzin and Torah scholar. She was the founder and dean of Beth Jacob Jerusalem, a prestigious Haredi religious girls seminary located in the Unsdorf neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel. She was the only child of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner (1906–1980), Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, and the wife of Rabbi Yonasan David, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood. Together with her husband and parents, she was on one of the airplanes hijacked by the Black September terrorists in 1970.
Yosef Shalom Elyashiv was a Haredi Rabbi and posek who lived in Jerusalem. Until his death at the age of 102, Rav Elyashiv was the paramount leader of both Israel and the Diaspora Lithuanian-Haredi community, and many Ashkenazi Jews regarded him as the posek ha-dor, the contemporary leading authority on halakha, or Jewish law.
Shimon (Simon) Schwab was an Orthodox rabbi and communal leader in Germany and the United States. Educated in Frankfurt am Main and in the yeshivot of Lithuania, he was rabbi in Ichenhausen, Bavaria, after immigration to the United States in Baltimore, and from 1958 until his death at Khal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights, Manhattan. He was an ideologue of Agudath Israel of America, specifically defending the Torah im Derech Eretz approach to Jewish life. He wrote several popular works of Jewish thought.
Mordechai Gifter was an American Haredi rabbi. He was the rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland.
Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, also Shtainman or Steinman, was a Haredi rabbi in Bnei Brak, Israel. Following the death of Yosef Shalom Elyashiv in 2012, he was widely regarded as the Gadol HaDor, the leader of the non-Hasidic Lithuanian Haredi Jewish world. Along with several other rabbis, Shteinman is credited with reviving and expanding the appeal of European-style yeshivas in Israel.
Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman was a prominent Talmudic scholar and rabbi who founded and served as rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore.
Avrohom Elyashiv was the Av Beis Din of the city of Gomel (Homel)
Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah is the supreme rabbinical policy-making council of the Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah movements in Israel; and of Agudath Israel of America in the United States. Members are usually prestigious Roshei Yeshiva or Hasidic rebbes, who are also usually regarded by many Haredi Jews to be the Gedolim ("great/est") sages of Torah Judaism. Before the Holocaust, it was the supreme authority for the World Agudath Israel in Europe.
Boruch Ber Leibowitz (Yiddish: ברוך בער לייבאוויץ Hebrew: רב ברוך דוב ליבוביץ, romanized: Boruch Dov Libovitz; 1862 – November 17, 1939, known as Reb Boruch Ber, was a rabbi famed for his Talmudic lectures, particularly in that they were rooted styled in the method of his teacher Chaim Soloveitchik. He is known for leading Yeshivas Knesses Beis Yitzchak in Slabodka and Kaminetz.
Har HaMenuchot is the largest cemetery in Jerusalem. The hilltop burial ground lies at the western edge of the city adjacent to the neighborhood of Givat Shaul, with commanding views of Mevaseret Zion to the north, Motza to the west, and Har Nof to the south. Opened in 1951 on 300 dunams of land, it has continually expanded into new sections on the northern and western slopes of the hill. As of 2008, the cemetery encompasses 580 dunams in which over 150,000 people are buried.
Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel was an American-born Haredi Litvish rabbi and rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel. During his tenure from 1990 until his death in 2011, the Mir Yeshiva grew into the largest yeshiva in Israel with nearly 6,000 undergraduate students and over 1,600 avreichim. According to one estimate, he taught 25,000 students over his lifetime. He continued to work during the last 28 years of his life, when he had Parkinson's disease, experiencing involuntary spasms and slurred speech. He raised an estimated US$500 million for the Mir during his tenure as rosh yeshiva. He was a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Degel HaTorah. He was known for his Torah erudition and his warmth and concern for his students.
Jonathan (Yonason) Rosenblum is the director, spokesperson, and founder of Jewish Media Resources, an organization which attempts to clarify journalists' understanding of Haredi Jewish society.
Zev Leff is an American-born Haredi rabbi, educator, author, and speaker. After serving as rabbi of the Young Israel of Greater Miami, Florida, for nine years, he and his family moved to Moshav Matityahu, Israel, in 1983, where he is the mara d'asra.
Chona Menachem Mendel (Mendel) Weinbach was an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, educator, author, and speaker. As the co-founder and dean of Ohr Somayach Institutions, a Jerusalem-based yeshiva for newly-observant Jewish men, he was considered one of the fathers of the modern-day baal teshuva movement.
Yeshivas Knesses Yisrael was a yeshiva located in the town of Sloboda Vilyampolskaya in Kovno Governorate of Russian Empire. It functioned from the late 19th century until World War II.
Vichna Kaplan was an Orthodox Jewish teacher and school dean who, together with her husband Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, brought the Bais Yaakov movement to America. A prize pupil of Sarah Schenirer, the founder of Bais Yaakov in Poland, Kaplan opened the first Bais Yaakov High School in Williamsburg, New York, in 1938. She later opened the first Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary, which provided teachers for all Bais Yaakov schools that subsequently opened in America and Israel.
After the German invasion of Poland in World War II and the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union, many yeshivas that had previously been part of Poland found themselves under Soviet communist rule, which did not tolerate religious institutions. The yeshivas therefore escaped to Vilnius in Lithuania on the advice of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. In Lithuania, the yeshivas were able to function fully for over a year and many of the students survived the Holocaust because of their taking refuge there, either because they managed to escape from there or because they were ultimately deported to other areas of Russia that the Nazis did not reach. Many students, however, did not manage to escape and were killed by the Nazis or their Lithuanian collaborators.