Began 1977 Name Ezra Schochet Role Rabbi | ||
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Alma mater Yeshivas Ner Yisroel, Beth Medrash Govoha | ||
Birth name Ezra Binyomin Schochet Predecessor Rabbi Simcha Wasserman | ||
Rabbi ezra schochet importance of learning halacha
Ezra Binyomin Schochet (Hebrew: עזרא בנימין שוחט) is an Orthodox rabbi and Lubavitcher Hasid who serves as rosh yeshiva (dean) of Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad/West Coast Talmudical Seminary in Los Angeles, California.
Contents
- Rabbi ezra schochet importance of learning halacha
- Early life and education
- Rosh yeshiva
- Personal
- References
Early life and education
Ezra Binyomin Schochet is one of six sons and four daughters of Rabbi Dov Yehuda Schochet (d. 1974) and Sara Sosha Mussensohn. His father was the Chief Rabbi of Basel, Switzerland from 1930 until 1947 and Chief Rabbi of The Hague and adjacent regional towns in the Netherlands from 1947 to 1951. Shortly after immigrating to Toronto in the early 1950s, the Schochets and most of their children joined the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, including young Ezra. His brothers include Rabbi Dr. Jacob Immanuel Schochet (1935-2013), a prominent scholar and lecturer in Toronto.
Schochet undertook his yeshiva education at Ner Israel Rabbinical College (1959-1960) in Baltimore, MD, Beth Medrash Govoha (1960–1963) in Lakewood, New Jersey, and Yeshivas Brisk in Jerusalem, Israel (1963-1966). After his marriage, he studied at Kollel Radomsk in Bnei Brak from 1967 to 1972. He received rabbinic ordination from both the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court and the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court between 1971 and 1972.
Rosh yeshiva
Schochet assumed his first position as rosh yeshiva of Tomchei Temimim in Lod, Israel, from 1972 to 1973. Afterward he returned to Canada and headed the kollel of Ner Israel in Toronto from 1974 to 1978.
In 1977 he was tapped to succeed Rabbi Simcha Wasserman as rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon in Los Angeles, which had been given over to the directorship of Chabad. Along with Schochet, Chabad transferred a group of Lubavitcher students from New York to bolster the yeshiva. In addition to serving as rosh yeshiva, Schochet is the yeshiva's CEO, curriculum supervisor, and senior professor of Talmud.
Personal
Schochet married Sara Rochel Weinberg (1944–2010), a granddaughter of the Slonimer Rebbe, in 1967. They have three sons and three daughters. One son, Rabbi Avrohom Schochet, is an associate professor of Talmud at Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad/West Coast Talmudical Seminary, while a daughter, Mrs. Hadassah Spalter, opened a new Chabad girls’ seminary, the Ohel Sara Institute of Higher Learning, in Los Angeles in 2012 in memory of her mother.