Gedalia Schorr

Rabbi Gedalyahu Schorr (27 November 1910 – 7 July 1979), also known as Gedalia Schorr, was a prominent rabbi and rosh yeshiva. He was regarded as the "first American Gadol" (Torah giant), an expression coined by Rabbi Aharon Kotler. Indeed, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the famed rosh yeshiva of Chachmei Lublin, remarked that Rabbi Schorr had the most brilliant mind he ever encountered in America, and one of the most brilliant in the entire world. He said this when Rabbi Schorr was only nineteen years old.

Rabbi Schorr was born in Ustrzyki Dolne, Poland, [Yiddish: Istrik] a shtetl near Przemyśl, in 1910, the sixth of Avraham Halevi Schorr's seven children. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Gedalyahu, a highly respected scholar and close Hasid of the Sadigerer Rebbe, a descendant of Rabbi Yisrael of Rizhin.

The Schorr family came to the United States in 1922, settling first on the Lower East Side and then moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Gedalia dedicated himself to learning with a passion that he maintained throughout his life. He soon caught the eye of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, principal of Mesivta Torah Vodaas.

When Rabbi Schorr was only twenty-one years old, Rabbi Mendlowitz appointed him to conduct the highest class in Mesivta Torah Vodaas. In later years, when Rabbi Shlomo Heiman, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, became ill and was unable to carry on his duties for a year and a half, Rabbi Heiman asked that Rabbi Schorr replace him for the duration of the illness.

After his marriage to Shifra Isbee in 1938, Rabbi Schorr left Torah Vodaas, accompanied by his wife, to study in the Kletzk yeshiva under Rabbi Aharon Kotler. When World War II was dawning, Rabbi Schorr, under pressure from his family and the U.S. Consul in Poland, returned to America against the advice of Rabbi Kotler.

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