Pesach Stein
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Rabbi Pesach Yitzhak Stein (1918 - 2002) was a renowned Rosh Yeshiva at the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio.
[edit] Biography
Rabbi Stein was born in Breinsk in 1918. His father, Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Stein, was the head of the Breinsk Beth Din the town's Rosh Yeshiva and a student of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who was the sandek at Pesach Yitzchok's bris.
Rabbi Stein studied at the yeshiva in Breinsk, and later at the Slonim Yeshiva under Rabbi Shabsi Yogel.
In 1936 Rabbi Stein went to study in the Mir Yeshiva in Poland, where he formed a close relationship with the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel.
With the start of World War Two, Rabbi Stein fled with the Mir Yeshiva to Vilna and then to Shanghai, where he spent the remainder of the war. During this time, Rabbi Stein formed a relationship with the Mashgiach, Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein. Many years later, when students would ask Rabbi Stein about life in Shanghai, he would reply: "All that we did was learn, learn and learn."
Rabbi Stein was the only member of his family who survived the Holocaust. His parents and three brothers were killed by the Nazis. After the war, he joined the remainder of the Mir students in New York, where the yeshiva had re-opened. For a short period, he joined a group of students who went to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Rabbi Eliezer Silver had founded a yeshiva. In Cincinnati, Rabbi Stein delivered a class.
In 1948, Rabbi Mordechai Gifter visited Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein in New York, in the hope of finding a suitable young man to marry his wife's sister, a Holocaust survivor and the daughter of Rabbi Zalman Bloch, who had been the menahel ruchani of the Telz Yeshiva in Lithuania. Rabbi Levenstein suggested Rabbi Stein, who subsequently met the young woman and the couple decided to marry.
Shortly after his marriage, Rabbi Stein began to deliver classes at the Telz Yeshiva. His classes soon became famous for their clarity, logic and delivery. At the time, Rabbi Stein was the only Rosh Yeshiva not to have studied in Telz and so his methodology and approach to Talmudic analysis were unique at the yeshiva.
In 1988 Rabbi Stein suffered a blow with the death of his oldest son, Rabbi Shmuel Zalman, to whom he was deeply attached. Rabbi Shmuel Zalman was only 38 years old. He was the author of Pri Shmuel, and delivered a class at the Heichal HaTorah Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Stein died on Friday 10th May (28th Iyar) 2002. He was buried on the Mount of Olives (Har Hazeisim), beside his son, Rabbi Shmuel Zalman.
His is survived by a son Rabbi Aaron Stein, one of the roshei yeshiva of the Or Hameir Yeshiva in Peekskill, New York. His daughters are married to Rabbi Yisroel Ginzburg, a Rosh Yeshiva at the Yeshiva of Staten Island and to Rabbi Avraham Doweck a maggid shiur at the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland.
[edit] Published Works
Rabbi Stein's students published his lectures on the Talmud in pamphlets and other forms, among them a stenciled three-volume edition called Shiurei HaRav Pesach Stein. As the lectures increased, Rabbi Stein responded to his students' requests and edited the pamphlets, reprinting them as a series of books called Likutei Shiurim.
