הרב גדליה שור

Rav Gedaliah HaLevi Schorr (5670/1910–7 Tammuz 5739/2 July 1979) was rosh yeshivat Torah Vodaas in America, and was called by Rav Aharon Kotler the first American gadol. He was born in Galicia into a family of Sadigura chassidim, the sixth of the seven children of Rav Avraham HaLevi Schorr, and was named for his grandfather Rav Gedaliah Schorr of Istrik, a chacham held in high regard and a close chassid of the Sadigerer Rebbe; by the tradition of the family they descend from Rav Gedaliah of Linitz, a talmid of the Maggid of Mezeritch. In 1922 the family made its way to America, taking up residence at first on the Lower East Side and afterward in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and he was among the first talmidim of Mesivta Torah Vodaas, where he soon caught the eye of the menahel, Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. Rav Meir Shapiro, rosh yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, said of him that his was the sharpest mind he had met in America and one of the sharpest in the whole world — and he said it when Rav Schorr was nineteen years old.

At twenty-one Rav Mendlowitz appointed him to give the highest shiur in Mesivta Torah Vodaas, and in later years, when Rav Shlomo Heiman fell ill and could not carry his duties for a year and a half, Rav Heiman asked that Rav Schorr fill in for as long as the illness lasted. In 1938 he married Shifra Isbee, and the two of them left for the yeshiva of Kletzk, where he learned under Rav Aharon Kotler and became his foremost talmid; as the war was dawning he returned to America under pressure from his family and from the American consul in Poland. After the petirah of Rav Mendlowitz in 1948 he was appointed menahel of Torah Vodaas in his place, and from 1958, after the petirah of Rav Reuven Grozovsky, he began to serve as rosh yeshiva, giving weekly shiurim in Beth Medrash Elyon, which he headed as well. Through his influence a number of the talmidim of these yeshivot took on a chassidic bearing, foremost among them Rav Moshe Wolfson.

He was among the leaders of the chareidi tzibbur in America and of the heads of Agudat HaRabbanim, worked on behalf of Chinuch Atzmai, and from 1970 until his petirah sat on the presidium of Agudath Israel of America. He was niftar in the midst of a sheva brachot seudah of a talmid, minutes after he had finished his words in honor of the chatan; his aron was brought up to Eretz Yisrael and he was buried on Har HaZeitim. After his petirah his shiurim and sichot were arranged into the Ohr Gedalyahu series — on the Torah, on masechtot of the Shas, and sichot mussar — drawn in good part from the discourses he delivered in his last three years, and his eldest son, Rav Yitzchak Meir Schorr, wrote Migdal Ohr on the chapters of his life and work.