Obituary

Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a leading halachic decisor and Torah luminary of our generation, passed away Wednesday morning at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem at the age of 102.

He had been ailing since February. As he took a turn for the worse, prominent rabbis and the hospital’s senior physicians gathered at his bedside and the sound of prayers and psalms recited by students and rabbis could be heard throughout the hospital.

Rav Elyashiv, an only child, was born in Lithuania in 1910 and moved to Israel with his family in 1922. He served briefly as rabbi in Ramle and was appointed a Rabbinic Court judge (dayan). He married Shayna Chana, z”l, daughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levine. They had 12 children.

Rav Elyashiv was the leading voice in Lithuanian Haredi (Mitnagdim) Jewry, stepping into the leadership position of Rabbi Elazar Shach, but being less vocal and trying to maintain the old order, distancing from Nachal Haredi and other innovations in the Haredi community.

Israeli leaders praised him as a Torah genius, a great man and leader, modest, one who loved Torah and his fellow man, a bridge between varied streams of the Jewish people. Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat called his passing a “great loss for Jerusalem and the Nation of Israel.