Thousands of Jews attended a funeral today in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn for Rabbi Boruch Sorotzkin, dean of the Rabbinical College of Telshe in Wickliffe, Ohio. Sorotzkin, a leading Orthodox scholar and a member of the Council of Torah Sages, the highest body of Agudath Israel of America, died here Friday at the age of 61 Burial will be in Jerusalem.
A descendent of generations of Orthodox scholars, Sorotzkin was the son of the late Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin of Jerusalem, who was formerly rabbi in Lutzk, Lithuania. He was the son-in-law of Rabbi Avraham Y. Bloch, a pre-World War II dean of the Rabbinical College of Telshe, Lithuania, where the yeshiva was established more than 100 years ago.
After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Sorotzkin fled with other students, first to Siberia, then to Shanghai and later to the U.S. where be helped rebuild the Telshe school in Cleveland. The rabbinical school built branches later in Chicago and Jerusalem.
Sototzkin was also a member of the presidium of Agudath Israel the Rabbinical Advisory Board of Torah Umesorah, and the presidium of Chinuch Arzmai, the Torah schools for Israel network.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
