Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan

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Rabbi Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan was a prominent Orthodox rabbi. He was born around the year 1890 in Kėdainiai, a town in the Kaunas County inLithuania.

From around age 12 until around age 16, he learned in the Telšiai yeshiva. After that, he shortly learned in the yeshiva of Kelmė. Then he continued to the Slobodka yeshiva.

He tried to reconcile the Mussar philosophy of Lithuanian Haredi Judaism with the philosophy of Hasidic Judaism. At the age of 30 he was appointed as Rosh Yeshiva of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin.

He died when he was only 34 years old.

Avraham Elya's famous poem, Shak'a Chama, expresses a sense of depression and searching. It begins: "The sun has set... my soul has set / In the depth of its sorrow as great as the sea..." (B'Ikvot, p. 171).

[edit] Works

Divrei Talmud, 2 volumes, Mossad HaRav Kook in 1958 reprinted 1970

B'Ikvot HaYir'ah, Mossad HaRav Kook 1956. 1988 expanded edition, is an expanded one. The writings were collected and edited by Rabbi Tzvi Kaplan.

[edit] External links

Biography of Rabbi Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan