page_title: Telshe Yeshiva
section_title: Rabbi Eliezer Gordon
hierarchical_section_title: Telshe Yeshiva / History / Rabbi Eliezer Gordon
caption_attribution_description: Rabbi Eliezer Gordon
context_page_description: Telshe Yeshiva is a yeshiva in Wickliffe, Ohio. It is the American transplant of a famous European yeshiva of the same name. Telshe in Ohio, a prominent Haredi institution of Torah study, also has branches in Chicago and New York.
  In 1875 this famous Eastern European yeshiva was founded in the Lithuanian town of Telšiai. During World War II the yeshiva began relocating to Wickliffe, Ohio, in the United States and is now known as the Rabbinical College of Telshe,
context_section_description: In 1883, Eliezer Gordon was appointed as the (head rabbi) of the town of Telz and in 1884, rosh yeshiva (dean) of the yeshiva.  A student of Yisrael Salanter, he was a brilliant Talmudist and expert in Torah law who had appointed by Rabbi Salanter as a maggid shiur (lecturer) in Salanter's yeshiva at a young age. Gordon also served as rabbi in Kelm, and for a brief time in Slabodka (a suburb of Kaunas/Kovno known in Lithuanian as Viliampole). Although Rabbi Salanter strongly held that everyone required mussar study, he made an exception for Rav Laizer.
  Gordon was not satisfied with a yeshiva that served only the younger students in Telz and the vicinity. It eventually became one of the largest in Imperial Russia. He added his son-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch to the faculty and in 1885 he acquired the talents of Rabbi Shimon Shkop. Both Bloch and Shkop were innovators in the field of Jewish education, each pioneering new methods and approaches to the study of the Torah (Hebrew Bible), Talmud and Halakha (Jewish law). Together, their methodical formulae set down the foundation for what became known in the world of Torah study as the Telzer Derekh ( the "Telzer approach").
  Innovation brought a rapid increase in the student body. Among them were designating lectures for specific student levels. Whereas other contemporary yeshivas provided one level of study for all students, Telz provided students with lectures commensurate with a student's age and understanding. When a student's standard had advanced, he would advance to the next shiur (class-level). This system was soon integrated into the structure of almost all yeshivas and remains the accepted structure in most yeshivas worldwide.
  There were five different shiurim at Telz; Rabbi Gordon delivered the highest shiur. Telz was especially noted for its ability to develop its talmidim in lomdus. Rabbi Laizer Yudel Finkel once stated that every talmud student would be best off studying at Telz, where he can develop his learning skills, for two years, and then studying in another yeshiva.
  The yeshiva eventually outgrew their Telz community-provided building and in 1894 moved into a new facility. That year they added a new subject of study—mussar ("Jewish ethics"). Until then the study of mussar was a students' personal prerogative; now, it was a part of the yeshiva curriculum. A new faculty position was created: mussar mashgiach (teacher of ethics). Telz's first mussar mashgiach was Rabbi Ben Zion Kranitz, a student of Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv. Kranitz was mild mannered, and did not force his students to accept the mussar approach. In 1897, however, Rabbi Gordon engaged a new mussar mashgiach—the dynamic Rabbi Leib Chasman, who instituted a very strict mussar regime in the yeshiva. Many students opposed this approach. Chasman later achieved world renown as the senior mussar mashgiach at the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
  In 1902, Rabbi Shimon Shkop left to become the rabbi of Breinsk, Lithuania. In 1905 Rabbi Chaim Rabinowitz joined the yeshiva to fill this void. Rabinowitz had served as rabbi to the town of Meishad, and later as a maggid shiur ("lecturer") at the Knesses Beis Yitzchak yeshiva in Kovno, Lithuania. As with his predecessor, Rabinowitz innovated a unique style of Talmudic analysis.
  In 1910, while fundraising for the yeshiva in London, Rabbi Gordon suffered a heart attack and died. He had stamped his imprint onto the lives of hundreds of young men. Among his students, now rabbis, were: Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, Elchonon Wasserman, Zvi Pesach Frank, Yehezkel Abramsky and others who in turn left their imprint on Jewish society and culture.
caption: Rabbi Eliezer Gordon
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