Yehuda Leib Gordin

Yehuda Leib Gordin (1854–1925) was a Polish rabbi and Hebrew scholar. The Chicago Daily Tribune wrote that Gordin was internationally renowned within Orthodox Judaism and was known as one of its foremost Hebrew scholars. Gordin was known as a Zionist and the author of Teshuvat Yehuda and many other books. He was the rabbi in the Minsk city of Smalyavichy from 1903 to 1910. In 1908, two of his sons established a secular Hebrew school despite opposition from area Orthodox Jews. One of his sons, the Yiddish writer Abba Gordin, was a prominent anarchist during the early Russian Revolution.
In the last years of the rabbi's life, he led the Tifereth Zion congregation in Chicago, the rabbinical training school (Beth Hamedrash L'Horah), and the city's orthodox rabbinical association as the chief rabbi of the city. He died of heart disease during his evening prayers on April 11, 1925. A hundred Jewish organizations met to organize his services, which were held two days later. An estimated 30,000 people attended the procession. The crowd was too dense to navigate for six blocks surrounding the procession. Later that month, 10,000 Jews met in silent prayer for the rabbi.