הרב יצחק מוולוז'ין

Rabbi Yitzchak of Volozhin (5540/1780 – 26 Iyar 5609/1849), known as Rabbi Itzele Volozhiner and by the acronym HaGRI”tz, was rav of Volozhin and rosh yeshivah there, and among the leaders of the Jews of Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was born in Volozhin to Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who taught him in the yeshivah and counted him among his closest talmidim in Torah.

He taught in the yeshivah in his father’s lifetime and took the position of rosh yeshivah after his father was niftar, giving the yeshivah the name Eitz Chaim in his father’s honor. He continued to run it after the authorities formally closed it in 1824.

In 1843 he took part in a conference convened by the government on the reform of Jewish education, at which the authorities sought to press their program upon the Jewish population. He defended the position of Torah-observant Jewry there, alongside other leaders, arguing that the government schools would endanger the raising of Jewish children, and sought concessions without surrendering Jewish identity; he made a favorable impression on the minister who presided. He was niftar at Ivenets. Rabbi Eliezer Fried, husband of one of his daughters, succeeded him as rosh yeshivah, and after him Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, another of his sons-in-law.