Shimon Shkop

Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Hakohen Shkop
Rabbi Shimon Shkop, left, conversing with Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski
Born	1860 Torez
Died	October 22, 1939 (age 79) Grodno
Occupation	Rosh Yeshiva of Telz and Grodna

Shimon Yehuda Hakohen Shkop (Hebrew: שמעון שקופ‎‎; 1860 – October 22, 1939) was a rosh yeshiva ("dean") in the Yeshiva Shaar Hatorah and in the Telshe yeshiva and a renowned Talmudic scholar. He was born in Torez in 1860. At the age of twelve he went to study in the Mir yeshiva, and at fifteen he went to Volozhin yeshiva where he studied six years. His teachers were the Netziv and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, with whom he was very close.

Rabbi Shkop married a niece of Rabbi Eliezer Gordon and in 1885 was appointed to the Telz Yeshiva, where he remained for 18 years until 1903. While there, he developed a system of Talmudic study which combined the logical analysis and penetrating insights of Rabbi Chaim Brisker with the simplicity and clarity of Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv) and which became known as the "Telz way of learning".

In 1903, he was appointed Rabbi of Moltsh, and in 1907 of Bransk. A famous pupil of his in Moltsh was Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna who studied under him for a year in 1906, before leaving to the Slabodka yeshiva when Rabbi Shkop himself left. During World War I, the communal leaders urged him to leave before the Germans arrived, but he refused and stayed with his community.

Between 1920 and 1939, at the request of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, he succeeded Rabbi Alter Shmuelevitz as Rosh Yeshiva of the renowned Sha'ar HaTorah in Grodno. He raised the level of the institution and transformed it into one of the finest yeshivos in Poland and beyond. Hundreds of young men flocked there from near and far. One of this students there was Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz the Suvalker Rav.