Jechiel Perr

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Rabbi Jechiel J. Perr (or Yechiel Yitzchok Perr) grew up in South Ozone Park, Queens, where his father Rabbi Menachem Mendel Perr served as a Rabbi. He attended high school at Mesivta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. After completing high school, he studied at the Talmudical Academy of Philadelphia, and Beth Medrash Govoha, in Lakewood, New Jersey, under the tutelage of Rabbi Aharon Kotler.

After spending time in Lakewood, he married Shoshana Nekritz, daughter of Rabbi Yehuda Leib Nekritz, granddaughter of Rabbi Abraham Joffen, and great-granddaughter of the renowned Alter of Novardok (Rabbi Yosef Yoizel Horowitz). It was after his marriage that he came into contact with the Novardok tradition. After leaving Lakewood he went to Beit Joseph in Brooklyn, New York, the yeshiva of his wife's father and grandfather. After a brief stint at Yeshivas Kaminetz, he left to open the Yeshiva of Far Rockaway in 1969. The yeshiva shares its name "Derech Ayson" with Rabbi Abraham Joffen book. The Yeshiva still stands today and hosts a high school as well as an accredited post-HS rabbinical studies program.

A series of his conversations on mussar are recounted in Morinis, Alan (2002). Climbing Jacob's Ladder. Broadway. ISBN 0-7679-0645-4, and also in Morinis, Alan (2007) Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, Trumpeter Books.