Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz

Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz was born in 1913 in Valozhyn

Lefkowitz was born in 1913 in Valozhyn to Moshe Dovid and Chaya Lefkowitz. The family was poor, and his father paid for private teachers for him. At age 12 he went to study at a yeshiva ketana away from home.

He later studied in Vilna at the Rameilles yeshiva under Rabbi Shlomo Heiman, whom he saw as his teacher. In 1936 he moved with his family to Mandate Palestine and studied at the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He also became close to Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer and to the Chazon Ish.

In 1940 he married Chava Esther Gershonowitz, daughter of the head of the Tiferes Tzion yeshiva in Bnei Brak, in a match proposed by the Chazon Ish. He began teaching at Tiferes Tzion and kept teaching there until his death. He also gave a long running class for working men.

In 1954 Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman named him head of Ponovezh L'Tzeirim together with Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, and he taught thousands of students there. He joined the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Degel HaTorah and in 1998 founded a national network of kollels for the study of Tohorot. He also published the teachings of Rabbi Heiman.

He stopped giving his regular classes at the yeshiva in 2009 because of weakness. He died in June 2011, and his funeral in Bnei Brak drew about 100,000 people.