Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman

His son-in-law, Rabbi Weinberg, who married his only child, Chana, succeeded him as rosh yeshiva of Ner Yisroel until Rabbi Weinberg's death in 1999.

Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman (Shushan Purim 1900, Daŭhinava - July 11, 1987) was a prominent Talmudic scholar and rabbi who founded and served as rosh yeshiva (yeshiva head) of Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore.

Ruderman's death on July 11, 1987, the 14th of Tammuz, followed less than 18 months after the deaths of Rabbis Yaakov Kaminetsky and Moshe Feinstein. Ruderman was one of the last surviving rosh yeshiva who came to America from Lithuania early in the 20th century.

In 1933, with his father-in-law's encouragement, Ruderman moved to Baltimore, where he was immediately offered a rabbinical post at Tiferes Yisroel Shul. Ruderman accepted the position on the condition that he be permitted to open a yeshiva using the synagogue's facilities. He began with six students and named the newly formed yeshiva Ner Yisroel (after Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin Salanter, the founder of the mussar movement).

In 1930, he joined his father-in-law, Rabbi Sheftel Kramer, at the latter's yeshiva in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1931, the Ruderman family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he served as one of the teachers at the Telshe Yeshiva.

Ruderman was born to a Hasidic family of the Chabad denomination in Daŭhinava, in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), where his father, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ruderman, was the rabbi. He studied in Yeshivas Knesses Yisrael in Slabodke, under the "Alter", Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, and the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, receiving semicha from the latter in 1926.

Around 1926, Ruderman published his only written work; it was re-printed in 1930, Avodas Levi. The Sefer Avodath Levi Project to preserve his legacy has been in progress. Posthumously, his students have published several volumes of his teachings: ethical insights based on the weekly parsha named Sichos Levi, later re-written and republished as Sichos Avodas Levi, lectures on the 19th century work Minchas Chinuch and other Talmudic and halachic insights in Mas'as Levi, and lectures on Sukkah, Kiddushin, Kesubos, Bava Kamma, and Bava Metzia, as Shiurei Avodas Levi.

In 1924, two years before receiving semikhah (ordination), Ruderman married Faiga Kramer from a rabbinical family.