Shmuel Brudny

Rabbi Brudny died on February 15, 1981. His son, Rabbi Elya Brudny, is currently a maggid shiur in the Mir Yeshiva and serves on the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudath Israel of America. Another son, Rabbi Abba Brudny, served for 25 years as the principal of the Yeshiva Rabbi Jacob Joseph in Edison, New Jersey and later as rosh kollel (kollel head) of the Edison Community Kollel becoming one of the mashgichim of Beth Medrash Govoha. His daughter Basya married Rabbi Menachem Ben-Menachem, a grandson of Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer who serves as the rosh yeshiva of the Tifrach Yeshiva.

Rabbi Brudny was born in August 1915 to Rabbi Elya and Basya Brudny in Smarhon', Russia (now in Belarus), during World War I. As a child, he studied in the local cheder before going to study in the Ashminer Yeshiva (a branch of the Novardok Yeshiva), and at the age of fourteen, was accepted into the Rameilles Yeshiva of Vilna, which then under the leadership of Rabbi Shlomo Heiman and Rabbi Meir Bassin. He remained in Rameilles for three years before transferring to the Mir Yeshiva in 1932, where he was referred to as "der iluy fun Smargan" (Yiddish for "the prodigy from Smarhon'). He was therefore given privileged treatment; besides for getting extra money from the rosh yeshiva (yeshiva dean), Rabbi Eliezer Yehudah Finkel, the rosh yeshiva also asked his own son-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, to keep an eye on Shmuel Brudny to make sure he was doing well.