Built to Endure

By Dovi Safier with additional research by Moshe Dembitzer

Rav Leizer Gordon carried dual leadership roles, and he blazed a new trail in both. As rosh yeshivah of the newly-established yeshivah in Telz, he built an educational structure that is still the gold standard of today’s yeshivah world. As rav of a town caught in the crosshairs of the enlightenment, he fought like a lion to preserve the purity of the mesorah.

But more than his educational foresight or his strategic efforts to build a Torah-true coalition across Europe, it was his personal example – a leader who gave away his last ruble to struggling students, the sparks that flew during his shiurim, the magnetic pull of a good kashe, his utter submersion in the sugya – that inspired his talmidim most.

One hundred fifteen years after his passing on foreign soil, far from his beloved Telz, Rav Leizer Gordon’s consuming passion for Torah learning still resonates — in the structure, substance, and spirit of the yeshivah world today

London, February 1910

A bleak winter sky hung over the thousands of mourners gathered outside the Philpot Street Great Synagogue on London’s East End. They had come to pay their final respects to one of the great luminaries of Lithuanian Jewry, Rav Eliezer (Leizer) Gordon, the venerable rosh yeshivah of Telz. From the temporary platform erected in front of the edifice, a passionate cry pierced the silence, echoing across the square. The voice belonged to
Dayan Shmuel Yitzchak Hillman (1868–1953) of Glasgow, a close friend of Rav Leizer. He was delivering a fiery hesped that would remain etched in the listeners’ memories​.

Dayan Hillman implored the crowd to imagine that the departed sage was speaking to them:

“Surely we would hear him echo Yosef Hatzaddik’s own words,” he thundered. “‘I have been stolen away from the land of the Hebrews…. And here, too, I have done nothing… rather they have put me in the pit!’”​