Rabbi Dessler רבי אליהו אליעזר דסלר
Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, mashgiach of the Ponevezh yeshiva, author of Michtav MeEliyahu
He came to learn in Kelm at thirteen—to a yeshiva where musar was not a weekly class but the ordering of a whole life. His semicha came from his uncle, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski. In 5689, when his father was ruined after the revolution, Dessler left for England: the rabbinate of London's East End, then Dalston, then the kollel at Gateshead. The war found the family divided.
His last years he was mashgiach at Ponevezh in Bnei Brak—answerable not for what a man knew but for what he did with it. He wrote no books of his own: Michtav MeEliyahu is six volumes of letters and talks, gathered by his students after his death. They are read by people who never sat in a yeshiva.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- “Michtav MeEliyahu” — six volumes of letters and talks gathered by his students after his death
Documents of the period
- The Kelm Talmud Torah — the school of musar he came from
- The Ponevezh yeshiva in Bnei Brak — where he was mashgiach in his last years
Basis: documents and evidence.