Isser Zalman Meltzer

Isser Zalman Meltzer was born in Lithuania in 1870.[1] He entered the Volozhin yeshiva at about the age of bar mitzvah. A history of the institution relates that his youth initially prompted its head, Naphtali Ẓevi Judah Berlin, known as the Netziv, to question whether he should be admitted, but that his ability soon became evident.[2]

Meltzer studied at Volozhin for seven consecutive years, from 1883 to 1890, and then spent a year at Radin under the Ḥafeẓ Ḥayyim.[2][1] His teachers included Ḥayyim Soloveichik and Berlin at Volozhin, and the Ḥafeẓ Ḥayyim at Radin.[1] Soloveichik drew him into a small group of students with whom he prepared lessons, and students reportedly called him “the genius with the definitive article.”[2]

Accounts of Meltzer’s intellectual formation associate Soloveichik with his Talmudic method, Berlin with his attachment to the Land of Israel, and the Ḥafeẓ Ḥayyim with his humility and ethical outlook.[1] Meltzer once described his approach to study with the remark, “I only recognize one page of Gemara, the page that I am currently studying.” The recollection presents the comment as an expression of his intense concentration on the text before him, despite his expertise in both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds.[2]

In 1892, Meltzer married Beila Hinda, daughter of Rabbi Faivel Frank.[1] She had considerable scholarly ability and assisted him throughout his life by transcribing his works and preparing them for publication.[1]

Meltzer’s first leadership roles developed within the network of Lithuanian yeshivas. An account of Slobodka Yeshivah says that Nathan Zevi Finkel appointed him and Moses Mordecai Epstein—described as brothers-in-law and graduates of Volozhin—as heads of the institution in 1893.[4] Other accounts date Meltzer’s appointment as a principal or head at Slobodka to 1894.[1][2] The sources also differ about when he left Slobodka: one dates his departure to 1896, while others place his move to Slutsk in 1897.[4][1]

The move to Slutsk grew out of an effort to establish a yeshiva there. In 1897, Rabbi Yaakov David ben Zev Wilowski, known as Ridbaz, sought assistance from Finkel of Slabodka in organizing the institution. Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff’s account says Finkel sent fourteen outstanding students, a group known as the “Yad Hazaka,” or “strong hand,” in reference to the number fourteen; Meltzer led them.[5] The account describes Slutsk as a long-standing center of Torah study.[5] Other sources likewise place Meltzer’s arrival and the establishment of the Slutsk yeshiva in 1897.[2][1]

Meltzer became head of the Slutsk yeshiva, which attracted hundreds of students, and succeeded Ridbaz as rabbi of the town in 1903.[1] He therefore combined the responsibilities of a leading Torah educator with communal rabbinic leadership. Local disputes among rabbis made it difficult to stabilize the yeshiva, and a Slutsk history says Meltzer also took responsibility for its ordinary physical needs, beyond teaching and scholarly direction.[6]

His lessons were highly regarded, while his Mussar talks—especially those delivered in the Hebrew month of Elul and during the Ten Days of Repentance—left a deep impression on students. The account recalls that he sometimes wept while speaking.[6] A separate recollection describes a conversation with a student named Shmarya, who had experience at the kibbutz Degania. After hearing about the community’s practices, Meltzer reproached him for not following the commandments of the Torah in their details. Shmarya answered with a play on the contrast between “black” and “white,” saying that their group’s essence was “the white group.”[7]

Meltzer and Rabbi Moshe Binyamin Tomashoff also edited and published the Torah anthology Yagdil Torah. As the yeshiva’s expenses grew, Russian law prohibited sending emissaries to collect funds for it. Meltzer proposed a weekly anthology that could both circulate Torah and provide a pretext for soliciting subscriptions and support. Its first issue appeared on 28 Kislev 5669, identified in the account as 1908, and was sent to 500 subscribers, including about 200 rabbis.[6]

During the First World War, Meltzer worked to prevent yeshiva students from being mobilized, handled communal affairs as Slutsk’s chief rabbi, and cared for refugees from Poland and Lithuania who had arrived in the town.[6] The same local history describes him as trying to keep the yeshiva and Talmud Torah operating through the Revolution and the Bolshevik victory. He was arrested, but released after local leftists recognized his devotion to the poor and oppressed.[6]

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the yeshiva moved to Kletsk in Poland, although Meltzer initially remained in Slutsk amid hardship, including imprisonment for teaching Torah.[1] A retrospective oral-history interview with Alter Pekier offers a more detailed account of the move. Pekier recalled that Aharon Kotler sent the first fifty students from Slutsk to Kletsk in 1921, with others following later; he estimated the eventual number as “more than 100 maybe.”[8] Pekier said Meltzer stayed behind because he was also the town’s rabbi and did not want to leave the community without a spiritual leader.[8]

In Pekier’s recollection, a friend warned Meltzer that he would be arrested. Meltzer and his wife hid and then crossed to Kletsk, arriving in 1923.[8] Pekier remembered Meltzer and Kotler together in Kletsk from 1923 until Meltzer left for Jerusalem in 1925, and said Meltzer returned to Kletsk in 1930 for the dedication of a new yeshiva building.[8] A separate account likewise dates the yeshiva’s move to Kletsk to 1923 and says that when Meltzer left for Palestine in 1925, his son-in-law Kotler became head of the school.[5]

Meltzer’s departure from the region is described somewhat differently across accounts. The Jewish Virtual Library says he left Russia for Kletsk in 1923, while the Slutsk history emphasizes that he initially remained in Slutsk and later moved on.[1][6] JewishGen places his aliyah in 1925 and says he was invited to head Jerusalem’s Etz Chaim Yeshiva; its Slutsk account narrates his departure after Kotler had become head of the yeshiva in Kletsk.[2][6] Pekier’s interview gives his recollection of the route and dates, but it is a retrospective oral history and qualifies some details.[8]

Meltzer settled in Jerusalem in 1925 and became head of the Etz Chaim Yeshiva, continuing a tradition of Torah learning that his biographers connect to Volozhin.[1][2] Etz Chaim is described as having been founded in 1841 by Jerusalem’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Shmuel Salant; Meltzer is named among its heads, although that account does not specify the dates of his tenure.[9] In Jerusalem, Meltzer devoted himself largely to disseminating Torah and strengthening yeshivas.[1]

In 1923, before his move to Jerusalem, Meltzer attended the founding conference of Agudat Israel in Vienna and was elected to its Council of Torah Sages, the Mo'eẓet Gedolei ha-Torah.[1] He was described as a fervent Zionist who exercised a moderating influence within Agudat Israel.[1] His attachment to the Land of Israel was also reflected in accounts of his earlier education: Berlin’s influence is associated with his love for the land, and a Volozhin history says Meltzer loved Zion and belonged to the Nes Tziona group.[2][1]

Meltzer’s public role included advocacy for yeshiva students and their institutions. At a January 9, 1950 meeting with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, he was described as “the elder among the heads of the yeshivas.” The delegation sought a formal guarantee that yeshiva students would be exempt from security service. Ben-Gurion had told them before the meeting that their request had already been granted, but the delegation nevertheless presented its case and asked that the arrangement be secured by law or government regulations.[3]

The yeshiva heads feared that students required to serve would discontinue their studies and fail to return to learning after release. They rejected Ben-Gurion’s proposal that students receive military training at their places of study.[3] Meltzer cited Ecclesiastes 9:18—“Wisdom is better than weapons of war”—and interpreted “wisdom” as Torah.[3] His appeal connected the protection of yeshiva study to the continuity of Jewish religious life, rather than treating the issue simply as an administrative question.[3]

Meltzer invoked the rabbinic expression “Give me Yavneh and its sages,” referring to the tradition about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s request to Vespasian during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. He contrasted that appeal to an enemy with the delegation’s request to “our brethren and our own flesh and blood,” and argued that Torah and the yeshivas were essential to Jewish endurance and to Jewish life in the Land of Israel.[3] He concluded by saying that yeshivas destroyed in the catastrophe of European Jewry had been rebuilt in the Land of Israel as an enduring center of Torah, and that thousands of students from abroad would come to study there.[3]

The meeting became a notable episode in the early state’s discussion of yeshiva students’ obligations. The INSS account reports that Ben-Gurion was deeply impressed by Meltzer’s address. Accounts recounted there attribute to Ben-Gurion the judgment that a figure of this kind appeared only once every few generations, and say that in one conversation he compared Meltzer’s words to those of an Israelite prophet.[3] At a cabinet meeting on July 12, 1953, Ben-Gurion recalled meeting Meltzer, Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz (the Hazon Ish), and Tzvi Pesach Frank, calling them “elderly men and scholars” and saying he had treated them respectfully and felt embarrassed that they had needed to come to him.[3]

Ben-Gurion also later recalled Meltzer’s assertion that Joshua son of Nun had been a head of a yeshiva. At a 1958 cabinet meeting, he said that he had not disputed the point because it was self-evident to Meltzer.[3] In response to Ben-Gurion’s comparison of Moses and Joshua with military leaders during the earlier discussion, the yeshiva heads had countered that Moses and Joshua were heads of yeshivas.[3]

Meltzer’s best-known work was Even ha-Ezel, a commentary on Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah.[1] The Jewish Virtual Library says the work first appeared in 1935, with seven volumes published during Meltzer’s lifetime and another volume posthumously.[1] A Sefaria catalog describes Even Ha'azel as part of a nine-volume commentary on Rambam’s Mishneh Torah and records that the section on Blessings was composed in Jerusalem around 1945–1955.[10]

Sefaria’s author entry labels Evan HaEzel as a work on the Shulchan Arukh, while its catalog record and other biographical sources identify Even Ha'azel as a commentary on Mishneh Torah.[11][10] The available material does not explain the inconsistent metadata. The title appears as Even ha-Ezel in the Jewish Virtual Library and Even Haezel in the Volozhin account.[1][2] A Slutsk biographical page renders it Even HaEzer.[12]

Meltzer also edited and wrote commentary for novellae of Nahmanides, published in 1928/29.[1] A Slutsk history names him as one of the main editors of the full Jerusalem Talmud in the Otzar Haposkim edition.[12] In 1945, he received the Rav Kook prize for his work on Maimonides; the Slutsk account renders the title of that work as Even HaEzer.[12]

His work extended beyond his own books. In Slutsk, Yagdil Torah offered a means of circulating Torah scholarship while supporting the yeshiva financially.[6] In Jerusalem, he chaired the executive committee of the Vaad Hayeshivot, according to the Slutsk history.[12] These scholarly and organizational roles complemented his teaching and institutional leadership.[1][12]

Meltzer’s influence was transmitted through students as well as through his writings and institutions. Sefaria’s author entry specifically notes his influence through his students and works.[11] Among those associated with his teaching, Moshe Feinstein studied with him for a year in Slutsk, according to a Sefaria-hosted biographical account.[13] The same account recounts that a dispute between Meltzer and his mashgiach, Rav Pesach Pruskin, went before a din Torah with Rav David Feinstein. Rav David ruled that Pruskin could take ten students to establish a new yeshiva, and Moshe Feinstein was among those who left.[13]

The account emphasizes that the dispute did not prevent later cooperation: Meltzer served as a guest speaker at the inauguration of Pruskin’s new yeshiva.[13] It also recounts an episode involving Moshe Feinstein during a period when he was missing. When Rav David Feinstein asked whether recovered writings proved that his son Moshe had died, Meltzer reportedly answered, “No, I am sure he is alive.”[13] The page does not identify the author or original publication details of this biographical account, so these episodes are best understood as reported recollections.[13]

Meltzer’s students and later rabbinic figures included men whose careers extended into public life. Ynet reports that Rabbi Yehuda Amital received rabbinical ordination from Meltzer and later married his granddaughter.[14] A Jerusalem Post tribute says that Yaacov Herzog, who was born in Dublin, also received rabbinic ordination from Meltzer.[15] Meltzer is also identified as one of Rabbi Elazar Shach’s former teachers.[16]

A Slutsk folklore account preserves a further example of Meltzer’s engagement with students whose lives had taken them into new forms of Jewish community. In the story of his conversation with Shmarya of Degania, Meltzer judged the kibbutz’s practices against the commandments of the Torah, while Shmarya replied with the “white group” quip.[7] The story reflects the persistence of religious argument and personal exchange across differences in communal practice, as remembered in the Slutsk account.[7]

Meltzer died in Jerusalem on 10 Kislev 5714 (1953).[12] The Slutsk biography notes that its original text states 1954, but explains that 10 Kislev 5714 fell in 1953.[12] He was buried in Israel, according to an account discussing his former student Elazar Shach.[16]

Meltzer’s legacy rests on a combination of scholarship, yeshiva leadership, and communal service. He led institutions in Slobodka, Slutsk, Kletsk, and Jerusalem, and his teaching linked the Volozhin tradition with the yeshiva world he helped sustain in the Land of Israel.[2][1] His Even ha-Ezel became a substantial multi-volume commentary on Maimonides.[1][10] His work on the Jerusalem Talmud, Nahmanides’ novellae, and the Yagdil Torah anthology reflected broader editorial and scholarly activity.[1][12]

His advocacy in 1950 gave a particularly vivid expression to his priorities: he presented Torah study and the yeshivas as essential to Jewish continuity and to the Jewish people’s life in their own land.[3] The address’s appeal to “Yavneh and its sages” became a defining account of his defense of Torah institutions before Israel’s political leadership.[3]

Biographical sources differ on Meltzer’s Slobodka chronology. The Slobodka entry dates his appointment as a head there to 1893 and his departure to organize the Slutsk yeshiva to 1896; the Jewish Virtual Library and JewishGen give 1894 for his Slobodka appointment and place his move to Slutsk in 1897.[4][1] These accounts establish the succession of his roles but do not settle the precise date of the transition.[2]

The most consequential public controversy associated with Meltzer was the dispute over security service for yeshiva students. The 1950 delegation sought a formal guarantee of exemption, opposed military training within the yeshivas, and argued that service would disrupt sustained Torah study.[3] An attribution ambiguity remains because Ben-Gurion’s diary records the name “Rabbi Zeltzer”; the INSS article says this apparently refers to Meltzer, whom its account identifies as a participant and speaker.[3]

Bibliographical records also differ over the description and transliteration of Even ha-Ezel.[11][10] The Slutsk biography’s original death year is corrected by its translator through the Hebrew-calendar date.[12] Accounts of the Slutsk-to-Kletsk migration vary in detail, and the USHMM chronology comes from Alter Pekier’s retrospective oral history, in which some dates and numbers are expressly qualified.[8]