הרב איסר זלמן מלצר

Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer (5 Adar I 5630/1870–10 Kislev 5714/1953), known in the olam haTorah as the Even HaEzel after his commentary on the Rambam, was rav and rosh yeshiva of Slutsk, then rosh yeshiva of Etz Chaim in Yerushalayim and chairman of the Moetzet Gedolei HaTorah. He was born in Mir to Rav Baruch Peretz and Mirel. At ten he began learning with the rav of Mir, Rav Yom Tov Lipman Baslianski, who wrote Malbushei Yom Tov and took the boy into his own home to bring him up; afterward he learned in the Mir yeshiva. At fourteen, in 5644/1884, he entered Volozhin under the Netziv and Rav Chaim Soloveitchik and learned there seven years, the youngest talmid in the yeshiva when he came. He stood out early, and Rav Chaim Soloveitchik would seek him out to speak in learning, saying that talking with him opened new channels of thought.

In 5652/1892 he married Bila Hinda, daughter of Shraga Feivel Frank of Aleksot. He was drawn to the mussar movement, and was a talmid of Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the Alter of Slabodka, and was appointed a rosh yeshiva in Slabodka in 5654–5657/1894–1897, at twenty-four. In 5657 the Ridvaz, Rav Yaakov David Wilovsky, rav of Slutsk, founded a yeshiva there as a branch of Slabodka and placed Rav Meltzer at its head; after the Ridvaz left for Chicago and later Tzfat, Rav Meltzer was appointed rav of Slutsk in 5663/1903 and held the post twenty years.

Under the Soviet regime he was persecuted and arrested several times, and in 5683/1923 he fled to Kletzk in Poland, where he headed Etz Chaim, the Slutsk yeshiva in exile, at the side of his son-in-law Rav Aharon Kotler and of Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, his close talmid and sister’s son-in-law. In 5685/1925 he was appointed rosh yeshiva of Etz Chaim in Yerushalayim and held that post until his petirah. In the siege of Yerushalayim in 5707, at seventy-seven, he was wounded in the leg; while he recovered a talmid who came to visit found his rebbetzin smoothing out sheets of wrapping paper so that they could go on writing divrei Torah, no writing paper being left in the market.

His Even HaEzel, in seven volumes on the Mishneh Torah, made his name in the yeshivot; in the introduction he thanks his wife Bila Hinda for copying out his manuscript and preparing it for print. The first volume appeared in 5695/1935, and the last came out after his petirah with an introduction by Rav Shach. Among his talmidim in Slutsk were Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin and Rav Shach, and in Etz Chaim, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rav Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz. He was niftar in Yerushalayim on 10 Kislev 5714 at eighty-three; his levayah drew some twenty thousand, and he was buried on Har HaMenuchot. Yeshivat Even HaEzel was founded in his name beside Yeshivat HaNegev in Netivot, and moved in 5775/2015 to Modiin Illit.