Telshe Yeshiva

Telshe Yeshiva (also spelled Telz) is a yeshiva in Wickliffe, Ohio, formerly located in Telšiai, Lithuania. During World War II the yeshiva began relocating to Wickliffe, Ohio, in the United States and is now known as the Rabbinical College of Telshe, commonly referred to as Telz Yeshiva, or Telz in short. It is a prominent Haredi institution of Torah study, with additional branches in Chicago and New York. It is the successor of the New Haven Yeshiva of Cleveland. In 1875 it was founded in the town of Telshi (Тельши, Telšiai, Telz) in Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire. By 1900 it was "one of the three largest yeshivot in Imperial Russia." The yeshiva was established by three Orthodox rabbis and Talmudists: Meir Atlas, later the rabbi of Shavli) and the father-in-law of Elchonon Wasserman and Chaim Ozer Grodzensky; Zvi Yaakov Oppenheim, who later became the rabbi of Kelm; and Shlomo Zalman Abel, the brother-in-law of Shimon Shkop. In 1883, Eliezer Gordon was appointed as the chief rabbi of the town of Telz and in 1884, rosh yeshiva (dean) of the yeshiva. A student of Yisrael Salanter, he had been a maggid shiur (lecturer) in Salanter's yeshiva, and a rabbi in Kelm, with a short stint in Slabodka (a suburb of Kaunas/Kovno). The yeshiva eventually became one of the largest in Imperial Russia. Gordon added his son-in-law, Yosef Leib Bloch, to the faculty, and in 1885, he hired Shimon Shkop. In 1894, the yeshiva moved from its Telz community-provided building into a new facility. That year, it added a new subject of study, mussar (Jewish ethics). Ben Zion Kranitz was hired for a new faculty position: mussar mashgiach (teacher of ethics). In 1897 Gordon hired Leib Chasman, who instituted a very strict mussar regime in the yeshiva which many students opposed. In 1902, Shkop left to become the rabbi of Breinsk, Lithuania. In 1905 Chaim Rabinowitz joined the yeshiva. In 1910, while fundraising for the yeshiva in London, Gordon died of a heart attack. Gordon's son-in-law Yosef Leib Bloch became the community's rabbi and the rosh yeshiva.