Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv הרב יוסף שלום אלישיב

A Litvak from Šiauliai, born in 5670. His grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv, was the kabbalist who wrote Leshem Shevo ve-Achlamah; in 5682 the family came to the Land of Israel for the grandfather's sake, and the boy was twelve. His marriage to Sheina Chaya, daughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, was arranged and performed by Rav Kook.

How he worked. He held no office that gives power and he did not make speeches. He sat and learned—by his household's account seventeen or eighteen hours a day, for decades. Out of that learning came He'arot, eighteen volumes on the Talmud, and Kovetz Teshuvot, six volumes of answers. He answered briefly, almost without explanation: the man who asked needed a ruling, not an essay.

The court, and leaving it. In his younger years he was a dayan in the courts of the Chief Rabbinate, under Rabbi Herzog, and was reckoned one of the best. In the early 5730s he left the state court system. Various reasons are given—disagreement over conversion and over how the courts were run; he published no explanation himself, and this reference will not decide for him.

Posek of the generation. From the eighties until his death questions came to him that had never been put to anyone: the definition of death and organ transplants, artificial conception, electricity on the Sabbath, the running of hospitals, money and interest in a modern bank. His rulings on these went out over the whole world and became the point of departure—people argue with them, but they begin from them.

He died in 5772, aged a hundred and two. Some two hundred and fifty thousand people walked behind his coffin.