Ephraim Oshry

Rabbi Ephraim Oshry was a halakhic authority best remembered for the responsa he composed during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. Born in Kupiškis, Lithuania, in the early twentieth century, he studied at the Slabodka yeshiva under teachers including Moshe Mordechai Epstein and Isaac Sher. After the Jews of Kaunas were confined to the Kovno ghetto in 1941, Oshry served as a rabbinic decisor there, answering wrenching questions about observance under persecution. He copied the queries and rulings onto paper torn from cement sacks, buried the notes, and recovered them after liberation. He then settled in Rome, opening a yeshiva for orphaned refugee children, spent a period in Montreal, and reached New York in 1952, where he led the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol for decades. His writings include the multi-volume She'elot u'Teshuvot Mima'amakim, Divrei Efraim, Imrei Efraim, and the Yiddish Khurbn Lite. He died in 2003.