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

Stein was born in Breinsk in 1918. His father, Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Stein, was the head of the Breinsk Beth Din and a student of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who was the sandek at Pesach Yitzchok's bris.

Stein studied at the yeshiva in Breinsk, and later at the Slonim Yeshiva under Rabbi Shabsi Yogel.

In 1936 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, Stein fled with the Mir Yeshiva to Vilna and then to Shanghai, where he spent the remainder of the war. During this time, Stein formed a relationship with the Mashgiach, Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein.

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 yeshiva 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 1948, Stein married the daughter of Rabbi Zalman Bloch, who had been the menahel ruchani of the Telz Yeshiva in Lithuania.

Shortly after his marriage, Stein began to deliver classes at the Telz Yeshiva. 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, Stein's oldest son, Rabbi Shmuel Zalman passed away. Rabbi Shmuel Zalman was 38 years old. He was the author of Pri Shmuel, and delivered a class at the Heichal HaTorah Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Stein died on Friday 10th May, (Hebrew date:28th of Iyar) 2002. He was buried on the Mount of Olives (Har Hazeisim), beside his son, Shmuel Zalman.

His is survived by a son Rabbi Aaron Stein, a rosh yeshiva at Or Hameir Yeshiva in Peekskill, New York. One daughter is married to Rabbi Yisroel Ginzburg, a Rosh Yeshiva at the Yeshiva of Staten Island and the other, to Rabbi Avraham Doweck a maggid shiur at the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland.

[edit] Published Works

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, Stein responded to his students' requests and edited the pamphlets, reprinting them as a series of books called Likutei Shiurim.