On this Sabbath, 25 years will have passed since the death of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most prominent poskim (decisors) of halakha (Torah law) in the 20th century.
Rabbi Feinstein was born in Uzdan, Belorussia. He became the rabbi of the city of Luban, near Minsk, in his early 20s. He married in 1920, and in 1937 moved with his family to the United States.
There, he was known as his generation's greatest halachic sage and decisor. His responsa on matters of Jewish law were compiled into a seven-volume set called Igros Moshe; an eighth book was released posthumously and a ninth is in the works.
Rabbi Feinstein's responsa covered a wide variety of topics, including organ donation, non-orthodox Jewish movements, abortion, cigarette smoking, education, attitude to reform and conservative jewry and factory farming. One of his responsa is the basis for allowing a woman to be a kashrut supervisor.
Rabbi Feinstein was very modes and lived simply. His door was open to Jews from all walks of life, many of whom would call him with halakhic questions at all hours of the day and night and whom he would answer patiently, despite his wife's efforts to get him some rest. The greatest rabbis of his generation consulted with him as a matter of course.
He served as Rosh Yeshiva of Metivta Tiferet Yerushalayim, which had a junior and senior high school as well as a rabbinic seminary, located on New York's Lovwer East Side. There, he would approach young students, put his arm around them, and ask if he could help them understand the Talmud portion they were studying.
Many of his students went on to be well-known rabbis in their own right, and saying that your were a student of "Reb Maiseh", the Lithuanian Yiddish pronunciation of his name, is a way to open rabbinic doors.
A well known story is that he did not appear at minyan one morning at the yeshiva even though he had been seen entering the building. No one wanted to start without him, and after looking for him all over, they found the venerable rabbi holding a crying 3 year old whose father had brought him to the services, but who had gotten lost in the building.
Rabbi Feinstein died on the day before Purim in 1986. He was buried on Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem. His funeral was attended by an estimated 300,000 people, and was the largest to take place in Israel in more than a millennium.