Elazar Menachem Man Shach

Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach (1899–2001) was a towering figure in twentieth-century Lithuanian-Jewish learning and leadership. Born in Vabalninkas in northern Lithuania, he studied under the Hafetz Hayim and at the Ponevezh Yeshiva, where he eventually became rosh yeshiva. After the Holocaust, he relocated to Bnei Brak and rebuilt Ponevezh as one of the world's premier institutions of Talmudic study, earning renown for his penetrating analytical method and moral clarity. In his later decades, he wielded considerable influence over the political and spiritual direction of the Lithuanian (non-Hasidic) yeshiva world, and his students and descendants became leaders of major academies across Israel and the diaspora.