Person · 5577–5656 AM · 1817 CE — 1896 CE
Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor רבי יצחק אלחנן ספקטור
the posek of all Russian Jewry and the freer of agunot
He was rabbi of Kovno for thirty-two years, to the end of his life.
The sabbatical year 5649 (1888–89) found the first settlements of the Land of Israel on the edge of ruin: not to sow was to starve. He permitted the land to be sold to non-Jews for the duration of the shemittah so that the work would not stop. Many stood against it; the sale went through, and the argument over the heter mechirah returns with every shemittah to this day.
After Volozhin was closed he set up the kollel perushim at Kovno; he stood in Hovevei Zion and in intercession before the authorities—beside Yisrael Salanter. A yeshiva in New York bears his name.
On the timeline
5641 · 1881 CEThe Pogroms of 1881, the First Aliyah and Hibbat Zion5563 · 1803 CEVolozhin: the yeshiva that made the Lithuanian world of study
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The responsa Be'er Yitzchak, Ein Yitzchak, Nachal Yitzchak — the freeing of agunot and the heter mechirah
Scholarship
- The standard rabbinic reference works and encyclopedias — the years, the seat of Kovno and the shemittah of 5649
Basis: Talmud and midrash.