Rav Yechezkel Abramsky

Rav Yechezkel Abramsky (1886-1976), Belarus, London, Yerushalayim; Headed the London Beth Din for 17 years until 1951. Studied in the yeshivas of Telz, Mir, Slabodka and particularly Brisk under Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. In 1926, while serving as the rabbi of Slutsk, joined Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin to form the Vaad Harabbonim of the USSR. In 1928, he started a Hebrew magazine, Yagdil Torah, but the Soviet authorities closed it, and he was arrested and sentenced to five years' hard labor in Siberia, where he is said to have composed Talmudic commentaries on translucent cigarette papers.