Eliezer Yehuda Finkel

Eliezer Yehuda Finkel was born in 1877 in Kelmė

Finkel was born in 1877 in Kelmė, Lithuania. His father was Nosson Tzvi Finkel, a leader of the Mussar movement. In 1882 the family moved to Slabodka, where his father founded a yeshiva.

He studied at the Telz yeshiva and then, from 1894, with Chaim Soloveichik in Brisk. He later moved between several yeshivas, including those in Slutsk, Radin and Mir.

In 1903 he married Malka, daughter of Eliyahu Boruch Kamai, head of the Mir Yeshiva. He gave his first lecture there in 1906. In 1917, after his father-in-law died, he became head of the yeshiva, and its enrollment grew to close to 500 students.

At the start of World War II he fled to Vilna, and in 1941 he reached the Land of Israel. His students went into exile in Kobe and Shanghai. In Jerusalem he founded a new Mir Yeshiva and led it until his death.

A son, his daughter-in-law and grandchildren were killed in the Holocaust. He died in 1965 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem. His son Beinish Finkel later headed the yeshiva.