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Letter by R. Mordecai Gifter (19161991), U.S. rabbi and talmudic scholar. R. Gifter was born in Richmond, Virginia, but he moved to Baltimore with his family, when his father realized that his son could not be adequately taught in a city with such limited Torah resources. He studied at Yeshiva College and at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) in New York under R. Moshe Halevi Soloveitchik. On the advice of his uncle, R. Yehuda Leib Zer, one of the directors of the RIETS, a newly ordained R. Gifter went to study in the Telz yeshivah of Lithuania in the winter of 1932. He became very close to the rosh yeshivah, R. Avrohom Yitzchok Bloch. With the expansion of the Ner Yisroel yeshivah in Baltimore by R. Jacob Isaac Ruderman, R. Gifter was invited to teach there. In 1943, R. Gifter became rabbi in Waterbury, Connecticut, and one year later, his uncles, R. Eliyahu Meir Bloch and R. Chaim Mordechai Katz, founded the Telz yeshivah in Cleveland. They asked him to join them.
R. Gifter moved to Israel in 1976, founding the Telz yeshivah in Kiryat Telz-Stone near Jerusalem with the support of Irving Stone, Cleveland philanthropist. However, three years later, the rosh yeshivah of Telz in Cleveland, R. Boruch Sorotzkin, died, and Gifter returned to Cleveland to succeed him. He remained at Telz until his death. The growth of Telz mirrored the growth and self confidence of ultra-Orthodoxy. A gifted speaker in Yiddish and English, R. Gifter was known for his humility. Introduced as a gaon in a local synagogue, he spent the first part of his discourse refuting the compliment and speaking of the denigration of learning and the inflation of compliments over the generations.
Among the works he wrote were Hirhurei Teshuvah (1977), Torah Perspectives (1986), and Sefer Pirkei Moed (1992). |
