Mordechai Gifter
1915 CE–2001 CE · Modern · Portsmouth
When the Nazis destroyed the famed Telz yeshiva in Lithuania, R. Mordechai Gifter (1915-2001) helped rebuild it from scratch in Cleveland, Ohio, and became the dominant figure in the postwar American Telshe (Telz) outlook. Born in Portsmouth, VA, he studied at Telshe in Lithuania under R. Avraham Yitzchak Bloch and R. Eliyahu Meir Bloch (his father-in-law was the Telshe mashgiach, R. Zalman Bloch) before World War II. After the war he co-led the rebuilt Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, relocated from the destroyed Lithuanian Telz. Through his collected sermons Pirkei Torah and his Talmudic insights Mevaser Tov, he became one of the most articulate teachers of his generation, equally fluent in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew.
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Portsmouth
What they did here
He was born in 1915 in Portsmouth, Virginia, to parents who had emigrated from Lithuania and settled in a region with few established Torah institutions.
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Mordechai Gifter’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Louis Ginzberg, Moshe Soloveichik, Mordecai Kaplan, Saul Lieberman, Yitzhak Kaduri, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Shemesh u-Magen, Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Shlomo Wolbe, Eliezer Waldenberg, Ovadia Yosef, Menachem Mendel Taub, Menashe Klein, Mordechai Eliyahu, David Hartman, Adin Steinsaltz, Nosson Tzvi Finkel of Mir
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Mordechai Gifter’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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Works
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