אליהו סולובייציק

Rav Eliyahu Tzvi Soloveitchik (c. 5562/1802–5641/1881), known in English sources as Elias Soloweyczyk, was a mechaber of the famed Soloveitchik family — a grandson of Rav Chaim of Volozhin through his mother Relka, and an uncle of the Beis HaLevi, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, whose father Yitzchak Zev was his older brother. His father, Rav Yosef, was a son of Rav Yitzchak Soloveitchik, who had moved from Brisk to the outskirts of Kovno, where Rav Eliyahu Tzvi was born. In about 5605/1845 he was forced to leave Kovno for reasons of health, and most of his remaining years passed in wanderings.

His first station was Danzig, where he printed Toldot Adam, on the life of his uncle Rav Zalman of Volozhin, brother of Rav Chaim, and in the same year the Rambam’s Sefer HaMadda with a short commentary of his own, carrying the haskamah of Rav Yisrael Lipschitz, the Tiferet Yisrael. An English rendering of his Rambam commentary appeared in England in 5623/1863 with the haskamot of Rav Nathan Adler and Rav Shamshon Refael Hirsch, and after the war it was printed anew in Munich in 5707/1947 by Rav Yitzchak Meir Zemba, nephew of Rav Menachem Zemba. Though he lived far from Volozhin, a letter in his hand survives urging the gathering of funds for the yeshiva. He also wrote Kol Korei, a work in the approach of Rav Yaakov Emden that sought to explain the Talmud to the nations; it was printed in English, French, German, and Polish, and finally in lashon hakodesh in Paris in 5640/1880. In his last years he became blind, and he was niftar in Frankfurt in 5641/1881.

His son Simchah moved from Slutsk to London and from there to Eretz Yisrael, where he was called “the Londoner”; Simchah’s son Zalman Yosef Soloveitchik was a pharmacist and communal worker in Yerushalayim.