Baruch Sorotzkin

rdf:langString Baruch Sorotzkin

rdf:langString Rephoel Baruch Sorotzkin

rdf:langString Rephoel Baruch Sorotzkin

rdf:langString Dzyatlava, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire

rdf:langString Speaking for Agudath Israel of America

rdf:langString Chassie Brog

rdf:langString Chenia Schulman

rdf:langString Rassia Busel

rdf:langString Shoshana Herzka

rdf:langString Lithuanian & American

rdf:langString Zalman Sorotzkin and Miriam Gordon

rdf:langString Rachel Bloch

rdf:langString Rephoel Baruch Sorotzkin (February 5, 1917 - February 10, 1979) was the Rosh Yeshiva of the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland and among American Jewry's foremost religious leaders. He was born on February 5, 1917 (13th of Shevat, 5677) in Zhetl, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). His father, Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin was the town's rabbi.As a young man, Sorotzkin studied under Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman in the Baranovich Yeshiva, and then under Rabbi Baruch Ber Lebovitz in Kamenitz. In 1940, Rabbi Boruch Sorotzkin married Rochel Bloch, daughter of the Telzer Rav and Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Bloch. Sorotzkin was involved in the "tension" over visas needed to flee: the two factions were "those from Lithuanian versus Polish Yeshivot;" control of the Kobe committee was by "students from the Polish yeshivot." The rabbi and his wife fled Europe at the start of World War II, via Shanghai, and made their way to the United States. There, they joined his wife's uncles (and his own cousins) Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch and Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz who had re-established the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio.