Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv

Yosef Shalom Elyashiv was born on 1 Nisan 5670, corresponding to April 1910, in Siauliai, Lithuania. He was the only child of Rabbi Avraham and Hayah Masha Levinson; the family adopted his mother's maiden name, Elyashiv, as its surname. During the 1920s, the family immigrated to Mandatory Palestine using immigration certificates arranged through Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.[1]

Through his mother's line, Elyashiv was the grandson of Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv, known as the Ba'al HaLeshem, a prominent Kabbalist. As a young man, Elyashiv edited part of his grandfather's writings, and through that work he began studying Kabbalah.[1] A distinctive connection to this branch of the family involved Shlomo Bar-Shavit, a secular Israeli theater actor whose mother was Elyashiv's cousin and a granddaughter of the Leshem. Bar-Shavit learned about the religious branch of his family at age twenty-five and later described two meetings with Elyashiv, including one in which the rabbi recalled a childhood family visit and repeated his mother's praise of Bar-Shavit's explanation of acting as a form of public service.[2]

In 1929, Elyashiv married Sheina Chaya, the daughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, widely known as the rabbi of the prisoners for his pastoral work with Jewish detainees under the British Mandate. Rabbi Kook officiated at the wedding. The couple had twelve children; two died young, and Elyashiv later lost four daughters. His family developed numerous ties to prominent Lithuanian Haredi rabbinic families. His son-in-law Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky became a major rabbinic authority of the next generation, while his in-laws included Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rabbi Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz.[1]

Elyashiv studied intensively at Tiferet Bachurim, the study hall founded by his father in Jerusalem, for approximately ninety years. The study hall was later relocated near the family home at 10 Hanan Alley in Mea Shearim and became informally known as "the Caravan." Elyashiv regularly left home at 6 a.m. for morning prayers there.[1]

His routine reportedly began around 3 a.m. and continued until approximately 11 p.m., with much of the day devoted to independent Torah study and answering halakhic questions. He did not write conventional halakhic books organized according to a systematic plan. Many of his responsa, letters, and rulings were instead collected under the title Kovetz Teshuvot.[3][1]

Elyashiv did not present himself as a miracle-working holy man or seek that type of following.[2] His authority rested on the perception that he possessed exceptional command of halakhic literature. Professor-Rabbi Avraham Steinberg, a physician and ethicist who consulted him on medical questions, said that Elyashiv could understand complicated medical and technological issues, identify suitable analogies, and connect them to a broad body of halakhic sources. Steinberg also said that Elyashiv recognized his obligation to answer public questions even though he disliked interruptions to his study and closely guarded his time.[2]

Elyashiv served for approximately twenty-five years as a member of the Great Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, part of Israel's official Chief Rabbinate system. During this period, he built a reputation as a meticulous and learned dayan, or religious judge, while continuing to develop his standing as a halakhic authority.[1]

His tenure ended in the mid-1970s amid the controversy surrounding Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren's Brother and Sister ruling. Goren permitted two individuals who had been classified as mamzerim, people of halakhically forbidden lineage, to marry. Leading Lithuanian authorities, including Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach and the Steipler, Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, opposed the ruling. The cited account states that Elyashiv resigned from the court after receiving their instruction to do so.[1]

After leaving the court, Elyashiv returned to intensive independent study and became increasingly established as a leading authority in the Lithuanian Haredi community. Researchers and associates quoted by ynet characterized his later positions concerning Zionism, the state, and its institutions as more stringent than those he had expressed earlier in his career.[1]

Elyashiv's position at the head of Lithuanian Haredi Jewry was consolidated after the death of Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach in 2001. Elyashiv, then ninety-one, was treated as Shach's successor and became known within the community as the Gadol HaDor and Posek HaDor.[1]

He was regarded as the spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah, the Lithuanian Haredi political party. Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael operated together in the Knesset through the United Torah Judaism joint faction while remaining distinct parties.[4][1] Although Elyashiv was not formally a member or president of United Torah Judaism's Council of Torah Sages, his influence over the party's direction was described as decisive.[1]

Elyashiv exercised much of his leadership without formal office or regular public speeches. Knesset members, rabbis, and political activists brought major halakhic and communal questions to his home on Hanan Alley. The Lithuanian Haredi newspaper Yated Ne'eman served as an important platform for public campaigns associated with his outlook. His influence extended to party policy, appointments, conversion standards, military and academic frameworks, education, organ-donation policy, access to the Temple Mount, and relations between Haredi society and the state.[1]

His electoral influence was illustrated by a poster issued before the 1996 elections to the 14th Knesset. The poster presented a halakhic ruling by Elyashiv instructing voters to support United Torah Judaism, represented by the Hebrew letter gimel, and included his photograph in traditional Haredi dress. The National Library of Israel's description places the poster within the community's emphasis on obedience to leading Torah scholars and the use of rabbinic rulings in election propaganda.[4]

Elyashiv issued rulings on religious, medical, technological, political, and social questions, many of which had immediate practical consequences for Haredi communities and Israeli religious institutions.

Moshe Halbertal recounts that when Elyashiv was asked whether one could pray for the recovery of someone who was brain-dead, he answered, "This is a vain prayer!" Halbertal presented the response as an application of Elyashiv's position that one should not pray for a miracle once an outcome is naturally settled.[5] Separately, Elyashiv opposed organ donation based on brain-death criteria because he did not accept brain death as halakhic death.[1]

In 2009, Elyashiv joined other senior Haredi authorities in prohibiting the use of Shabbat elevators, whether ascending or descending. The ruling cited technical opinions from elevator engineers asserting that passengers directly caused prohibited work even in automated systems. Rabbi Yisrael Rozen of the Tzomet Institute disputed the ruling's treatment of the opposing position and noted that authorities associated with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach permitted the technology under certain interpretations.[6]

Elyashiv opposed Jewish ascent to the Temple Mount because of halakhic concerns regarding ritual impurity and entry into the sacred precincts.[7][1] He also opposed attempts to enter Joseph's Tomb and rejected the heter mechirah, the nominal sale of Jewish-owned agricultural land to a non-Jew to permit cultivation during the sabbatical year, or shemitah.[1]

His influence was also felt in appointments to the rabbinical courts. A case study published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs described Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef as strongly opposed to appointing university-educated candidates to rabbinical-court positions. The study stated that Elyashiv selected Dayan Hagai Izirer for the Rabbinical Court of Appeals and backed Rabbi Yona Metzger's successful 2003 election as chief Ashkenazi rabbi despite public opposition to Metzger's qualifications.[8] That year, Elyashiv also supported Uri Lupolianski's successful campaign for mayor of Jerusalem.[1]

On ethnic discrimination in Haredi educational institutions, Elyashiv opposed Education Ministry intervention in the placement of Sephardi girls in seminaries. At the same time, he condemned discrimination on ethnic grounds and said that he would work to withdraw state funding from institutions that discriminated against girls because of their background.[1]

A ynet profile portrayed his approach to territorial questions as comparatively moderate. It reported that he tacitly accepted Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza while Degel HaTorah remained in the governing coalition.[1] A Law Library of Congress report stated that he allegedly refused to sign a December 2010 letter declaring that Jewish law prohibited selling or renting Israeli property to non-Jews; the report attributed the allegation to a contemporary news account.[9]

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv died at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem on July 18, 2012, at the age of 102, after suffering from congestive heart failure.[10][1] As his health declined during the months before his death, leadership of the Lithuanian Haredi community gradually shifted toward Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman in Bnei Brak, who had been identified as a likely successor.[11]

More than 250,000 people attended Elyashiv's funeral procession, according to police estimates reported by the Jerusalem Post and ynet.[12][11] The procession left his home on Hanan Alley in Mea Shearim, passed through central Jerusalem, and ended at the Givat Shaul cemetery. Many mourners walked several kilometers late at night, and the crowd called out Shema Yisrael and "The Lord is God."[11]

Participants included ministers, Knesset members, senior rabbis, and public figures from beyond the Lithuanian Haredi community. Some rabbis described the occasion as a "day of calamity for the entire Jewish people" and ruled that mourners should tear their garments and recite the blessing "Blessed is the True Judge." Elyashiv had requested in his will that no eulogies be delivered, although his son-in-law Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein offered brief words of farewell.[11]

Elyashiv's legacy rests primarily on decades of halakhic decision-making. His collected responsa, including Kovetz Teshuvot, preserve rulings and letters addressing medicine, technology, family law, commercial law, and ritual practice.[3] Although he did not produce a conventional systematic code, the large body of decisions recorded by his students and questioners documents the breadth of issues brought before him.[1]

Within Israeli Haredi society, his career demonstrated how extensive religious authority could be exercised without formal institutional office or sustained public oratory. His home in Mea Shearim functioned as an informal center of decision-making affecting elections, rabbinical appointments, education, conversion, medical ethics, and communal policy.[1]

For the Lithuanian Haredi community, his death marked the end of an era in which he had been widely treated as its senior halakhic authority. The gradual transfer of leadership to Rabbi Shteinman also illustrated that succession had begun before Elyashiv's death rather than occurring through a single formal appointment.[1][11]

The turnout at his funeral and the participation of public figures from multiple religious and political communities reflected a public standing extending beyond his immediate circle of followers.[12][11]

Several episodes in Elyashiv's career generated significant debate within and outside the Haredi community.

The most widely discussed controversy of his later years concerned the ban on books by Rabbi Natan Slifkin, who argued that Torah could be reconciled with modern science and that statements by the Talmudic sages about the natural world were not necessarily infallible. Slifkin described Elyashiv as the most distinguished signatory to the ban. Rabbi Aharon Feldman traveled to Israel to ask how views expressed by earlier Torah authorities could be condemned as heretical, and Elyashiv reportedly replied, "They could say it, we cannot."[13] Slifkin's account states that Elyashiv was surprised when shown a formulation describing the books as heretical but later reaffirmed the ban. According to Feldman's clarification as presented by Slifkin, Elyashiv regarded the works as something that "could be called" heresy in a communal and social sense rather than necessarily as technically heretical in every respect.[13]

Elyashiv's 2009 prohibition on Shabbat elevators also produced disagreement within the halakhic community. Rabbi Yisrael Rozen argued that the ruling did not adequately present the opposing technical and halakhic position, while authorities associated with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach permitted the devices under certain conditions.[6]

The interpretation of Elyashiv's departure from the Great Rabbinical Court is also contested. The cited account connects his resignation to opposition to Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren's Brother and Sister ruling and states that it followed guidance from Rabbis Shach and the Steipler. Researchers and associates quoted in the same profile characterized Elyashiv's positions on Zionism and state institutions as becoming more stringent after his departure; this remains an attributed historical interpretation rather than an uncontested conclusion.[1]