הרב יצחק אלחנן ספקטור

Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor (5577/1817–21 Adar 5656/1896), rav of Kovno, was the greatest posek of his generation, crowned by world Jewry with the title Rashkebehag — rabban shel kol bnei hagolah, the rav of all the exile. He was born in the town of Ros in the Grodno region to Rav Yisrael Isser, the town’s rav and moreh tzedek and his first teacher. At bar-mitzvah age he married Sarah Reizel of Volkovisk and settled by her parents, learning under the town’s rav, Rav Binyamin Diskin, beside his son and lifelong friend Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, later of Brisk, and under Rav Eliyahu Schick; his semicha came from Rav Binyamin Diskin and from Rav Yitzchak Isaac Chaver of Tiktin.

His path in rabbanut began in Zabelin in 5597/1837, before he was twenty, at five zlotys a week; in 5599/1839 Bereza took him on the word of Rav Yaakov of Karlin, author of the Mishkenot Yaakov. When Nishviz chose him in 5606/1846, Bereza would not release him, and he left the town by night — and fled Nishviz the same way when Novardok called him in 5611/1851. In 5624/1864 he was raised to the rabbanut of Kovno, which he carried until his petirah. Already from his earlier posts she’eilot ran to him from all Russia and beyond, and over the years he became the address of the Jewish world: his teshuvot fill Be’er Yitzchak (Königsberg 5618/1858), Nachal Yitzchak on Choshen Mishpat, and Ein Yitzchak, marked by straight sevara, wide beki’ut, and an orderly hand that divides every teshuva into its klalim and pratim. Above all he was the matir agunot of his age — a labor he held to be a great mitzvah, his way inclining toward heter.

He stood at the center of Klal Yisrael’s burdens. With Rav Yisrael Salanter he fought the gezeirot of the Russian government; in the famine year of 5628/1868 he headed the relief effort and permitted peas and beans for that Pesach; after the pogroms of 5641/1881 he was the only rav invited to the conference of Jewish leaders in St. Petersburg. He sent out anonymous kuntresim on the misery of Russian Jewry that were translated and spread through England, France, Italy, and America, stirring gatherings of protest in many lands, and it was he, unnamed, who moved Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch in 5644/1884 to write his defense of the Talmud against the slanderers. When the government closed the Volozhin yeshiva — a closure he had labored to prevent — he stood behind the kollel haperushim of Kovno in its place. He supported Chovevei Zion and the settlement of Eretz Yisrael, greeting the Katowice conference of 5645/1885 as “a gathering of tzaddikim,” and the heter mechira issued by rabbanim for the shemitta in the new moshavot was made on the condition “that the gaon Rav Yitzchak Elchanan agree with us.”

He was niftar in Kovno on 21 Adar 5656/1896 and was buried there; his son Rav Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz filled his place in the rabbanut of Kovno. His name stands today on Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) in New York, on the Kamenitz yeshiva Knesses Beis Yitzchok of Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz, and on the Nachalat Yitzchak neighborhood of Tel Aviv.