הרב אליהו אליעזר דסלר

Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (5652/1892–24 Tevet 5714/1953), the author of Michtav MeEliyahu, was among the great baalei mussar of the Kelm school in the twentieth century — rav in England, builder of the Gateshead Kollel, and mashgiach ruchani of Yeshivat Ponevezh. He was born in Homel to Rav Reuven Dov Dessler, a close talmid of the Alter of Kelm, Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv, and a timber merchant; his mother, Chana Freidel, was a granddaughter of Rav Yisrael Salanter. At about fourteen he entered the yeshiva of Kelm under Rav Tzvi Hirsch Broida, the Alter’s son-in-law, and all his life counted himself a child of Kelm and its path of self-perfection. He received semichah from his uncle Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, who gave semichah to very few. In 5680/1920 he married Bluma, daughter of Rav Nachum Ze’ev Ziv and granddaughter of the Alter; he declined a dayanut in Vilna and entered the family business — a fortune the Russian Revolution swept away.

In 5688/1928 he accompanied his ailing father to London and remained in England, serving in the rabbanut in the East End and in Dalston, where he taught small circles of talmidim — among them Suleiman Sassoon of the Sassoon family, and Aryeh Carmell, who would one day arrange his Torah for print. In the early 1940s he took on the spiritual leadership of the newly founded kollel in Gateshead, then a novelty in Western Europe as a house of full-time learning for married men, and built it up both in its learning and in its means. In 5707/1947 he answered the call of Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman to become mashgiach ruchani of Yeshivat Ponevezh in Bnei Brak, where the mussar shmuessen he gave — drawing on the Maharal, the Ramchal, and the Tanya — are repeated in the yeshiva world to this day.

After his petirah his talmidim, headed by Rav Aryeh Carmell and Rav Chaim Friedlander, gathered his writings, letters, and talks into the five volumes of Michtav MeEliyahu, a series that spread through the yeshiva world and was rendered into English as Strive for Truth. In it stands his famous teaching of the nekudat habechirah: a man’s free choice is fought out at one moving point, and every victory over the yetzer raises that point higher; and the Kuntres HaChesed, which teaches that love grows from giving, not from taking. His chiddushim on the Talmud were printed as Chiddushei HaGra’a Dessler on Shas.

Rav Dessler was niftar suddenly of a heart attack at the close of 1953 and was buried in the Zichron Meir cemetery in Bnei Brak. His talmid Rav Chaim Friedlander later filled his place as mashgiach of Ponevezh; among his other talmidim were Rav Gershon Edelstein, Rav Yaakov Edelstein, Rav Moshe Shapira, and Rav Mattisyahu Salomon. His son, Rav Nachum Ze’ev Dessler, founded the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland.