Epstein, Moses Mordecai

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EPSTEIN, MOSES MORDECAI

EPSTEIN, MOSES MORDECAI (1866–1933), talmudist and rosh yeshivah in Lithuania and Ereẓ Israel. Born in Bakst, Moses studied in his youth at the Volozhin yeshivah where he was known as the "illui ("prodigy") of Bakst." At Volozhin he supported the Ḥovevei Zion group, founded by students of the yeshivah and in 1891 was a member of a Ḥovevei Zion delegation, which bought the land for the settlement of Ḥaderah. In 1893 he was appointed head of the Keneset Israel yeshivah of Slobodka, a position he filled until his death. During World War i he wandered from town to town in Russia at the head of his yeshivah and after the war became one of the leaders of religious Jewry in Lithuania and a cofounder of its rabbinical council. In 1923 at the conference of the Agudat Israel held in Vienna, he was elected a member of the Kenesiyyahha-Gedolah, the supreme body of the organization, and the Mo'eẓet Gedolei ha-Torah, its rabbinical council, established on that occasion. In 1924 he transferred most of the Keneset Israel student body to their sister yeshivah in *Hebron, which he had established. After the 1929 riots in Hebron in which many of the students were killed, he moved the yeshivah to Jerusalem. His method of studying Jewish law was to seek an understanding of the structure of individual laws as a means of comprehending the system of talmudic law in general. To this end he made a special study of Maimonides, whose method of halakhic commentary he sought to elucidate. In his teaching, likewise, he stressed the understanding of the underlying principles of individual laws more than expertise in wider areas. Epstein's method was adopted in numerous yeshivot. A collection of his lectures, entitled Levush Mordekhai, was published in four volumes: on tractate Bava Kamma (1901); on Bava Meẓia (1929); on the four parts of the Shulḥan Arukh (1946); and on Yevamot and Gittin (1948).