Began 1964 Denomination Orthodox Died April 16, 1998 Yeshiva Mir yeshiva | Ended 1998 Name Shraga Kalmanowitz Positions Rosh yeshiva | |
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Predecessor Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz Birth name Shraga Moshe Kalmanowitz Buried Sanhedria Cemetery, Jerusalem Place of burial Sanhedria Cemetery, Jerusalem, Israel, Jerusalem, Israel | ||
Shraga Moshe Kalmanowitz (Hebrew: שרגא משה קלמנוביץ; 1918 – April 16, 1998) was a Polish-American Orthodox rabbi. He was a rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York, from 1964 to 1998.
Biography
Shraga Moshe Kalmanowitz was born in Rakov, Poland, in 1918 to Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz (1891-1964), the Rav of the town. His mother was the daughter of Rabbi Betzalel Hakohen, a dayan (rabbinical court judge) in Vilna and author of the Talmudic commentary Mareh Kohen, which appears in all printed editions of the Talmud. He was the eldest of three brothers; he also had two sisters.
At the age of 10 he began studying at the Mir yeshiva in Mir, Belarus, and later studied at the Kaminetz Yeshiva led by Rabbi Baruch Ber Leibowitz. He came to the United States with his mother and siblings in 1941 (his father had immigrated a year earlier) and studied at both Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and Beth Medrash Elyon.
After his marriage, Kalmanowitz became a maggid shiur in the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn. Upon the death of his father in 1964, he and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Shmuel Berenbaum, assumed the roles of roshei yeshiva. He followed his father's lead in overseeing the education of Sephardi North African students at the Mir Yeshiva. He was also close with Sephardi organizations in New York City; he was one of the speakers at the grand opening of the mikveh of the Sephardi Brooklyn community on Avenue S.
He died on April 16, 1998 (20 Nisan 5758) in New York. His body was flown to Israel for burial beside his father’s grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery in Jerusalem.