Elazar Menachem Shach

Rabbi Elazar Shach Z"L
Rav Shach
Elazar Shach at the Ponevezh Yeshiva
Position	Co-Rosh yeshiva
Yeshiva	Ponevezh Yeshiva
Personal details
Birth name	Elazar Menachem Man Shach
Born	January 1, 1899 Vaboilnik, Lithuania
Died	November 2, 2001(2001-11-02) (aged 102) Tel Aviv, Israel
Buried	Bnei Brak, Israel
Parents	Rabbi Ezriel Shach, Batsheva Shach
Spouse	Guttel Schach
Children	Miriam Raisel, Devorah, and Ephraim

Elazar Menachem Man Shach (Hebrew: אלעזר מנחם מן שך‎) Elazar Shach (January 1, 1899 O.S. – November 2, 2001) was a leading Lithuanian-Jewish Haredi rabbi in Bnei Brak, Israel. He also served as one of three co-deans of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak along with Rabbis Shmuel Rozovsky and Dovid Povarsky.

Due to his differences with the Hasidic leadership of the Agudat Yisrael in 1984 he allied with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who had founded the Shas party. Later, in 1988, Shach sharply criticized Ovadia Yosef and said that "Sepharadim are not yet ready for leadership positions", and subsequently founded the Degel HaTorah political party representing Lithuanian non-Hasidic Ashkenazi Jews in the Israeli Knesset.

Elazar Menachem Man Shach was born in Vabalninkas (Vaboilnik in Yiddish), a rural village in northern Lithuania to Rabbi Ezriel and Batsheva Shach. The Shach family had been merchants for generations, but Batsheva's family, the Levitans, were religious scholars who served various Lithuanian communities. Batsheva's brother, Rabbi Osher Nisan Levitan, later became an important figure in the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States. Elazar was an illui (child prodigy).