Gedalia Schorr

Rabbi Gedalyahu Schorr (1910 – 1979) was a prominent rabbi and rosh yeshiva. He was regarded as the "first American Gadol" (Torah giant), an expression coined by Rabbi Aharon Kotler. Indeed, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the famed rosh yeshiva of Chachmei Lublin, remarked that Rabbi Schorr had the most brilliant mind he encountered in America, and one of the most brilliant in the entire world. This was when Rabbi Schorr was only nineteen years old.

Early years

Rabbi Schorr was born in Istrick, Poland, a Shtetl near Przemyśl, in 1910, the son of Avraham Halevi Schorr. He was named after his paternal grandfather Gedalyahu, a highly respected scholar and close chasid of the Sadigerer Rebbe, a descendant of Rabbi Yisrael of Rizhin.

The Schorr family came to America in 1922, settling first on the Lower East Side and then moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Gedalyahu dedicated himself to learning with a passion that he maintained throughout his life. Rabbi Schorr soon caught the eye of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, principal of Mesivta Torah Vodaath.

Torah Vodaath and Kletzk

When Rabbi Schorr was only twenty-one years old Rabbi Mendlowitz appointed him to conduct the highest class in Mesivta Torah Vodaath. In later years, when Rabbi Shlomo Heiman, rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaath, became ill and was unable to carry on his duties for a year and a half, Rabbi Heiman asked that Rabbi Schorr replace him for the duration of the illness.

After his marriage to Shifra Isbee in 1938, Rabbi Schorr left Torah Vodaath, accompanied by his wife, to study in Kletzk under Rabbi Aharon Kotler. When the Second World War broke out, Rabbi Schorr returned to America.

After Rabbi Mendlowitz died in 1948, Rabbi Schorr was appointed principal of Torah Vodaath in his stead. He began functioning as "Rosh Yeshivah" (dean) in 1958 after the death of Rabbi Reuven Grozovsky, delivering weekly classes in Bais Medrash Elyon.

From 1970 until his death, he served as a member of the presidium of Agudath Israel of America. A sampling of his shiurim on the Torah can be found in the Sefer "Ohr Gedalyahu", a compendium of highly novel and lucid discourses on Jewish thought that he delivered in the last three years of his life. He died in Brooklyn, New York, on July 7, 1979. His son Rabbi Avraham Schorr serves as Rabbi of "Kahal Tiferes Yaakov". His son Rabbi Yisroel Simcha Schorr is Rosh Yeshivah of Ohr Somayach, Monsey, and is one of the General Editors of the English translation of Artscroll's monumental Schottenstein Edition Talmud. A Sefer by the name of "Migdal Ohr" on the life of Rabbi Schorr, edited by his son Rabbi Yitzchok Meir Schorr, was published in Brooklyn in 2002.