הרב אליה סבי

Rav Elya Svei (13 Adar Sheini 5684/19 March 1924–1 Nisan 5769/26 March 2009) was rosh yeshiva of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia and president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah in America. He was born in Kovno, Lithuania, to Rav Shmuel Leib Svei, a rav in the city and one of the men of Kollel Kovno, which was led by Rav Yisrael Salanter, the father of the mussar movement, and there he passed his childhood years. At nine he crossed to America, where his father was then raising funds, and the boy joined him. He learned first at the school of Rabbi Jacob Joseph and then at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, where he received Torah from Rav Shlomo Heiman and finished its Hebrew Parochial High School division in 1941; from there he went to Lakewood and became a prime talmid of Rav Aharon Kotler. He married Devora, daughter of Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz, the founder of the Mir in America.

In 1955 he was appointed rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva in Philadelphia, which had been founded two years earlier at the direction of his rebbe Rav Aharon Kotler, taking the place of Rav Dov Schwartzman and serving alongside Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky — a position he filled until his petirah. He sat on the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah and chaired the Rabbinic Administrative Board of Torah Umesorah, stepping down from both posts in June 2002. After Rav Moshe Feinstein was niftar in Adar Sheini 5746/1986 he became the leader of charedi Jewry in America and president of the American Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, serving until 5759, when he fell ill and Rav Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe, took his place. He helped found Sinai Academy in Brooklyn, which schooled boys of middle-school and high-school age drawn mainly from Russian immigrant homes that kept little of Torah.

His brother-in-law was Rav Shmuel Birnbaum, rosh yeshiva of the Mir in America; his daughter Lakee is married to Rav Isser Gorelick, a rebbi in Yeshiva Gedolah Zichron Moshe in South Fallsburg and son of the yeshiva’s founder Rav Yerucham Gorelick. He was niftar on 1 Nisan 5769/26 March 2009. His levaya set out from the yeshiva in Philadelphia with tens of thousands accompanying it, continued to Kennedy airport for a short hesped, and went on to Eretz Yisrael, where it left from the Mir in Yerushalayim with tens of thousands more; he was buried on Har HaZeitim. His son Rav Yehuda Svei serves as rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva in Philadelphia.