rabbis, Reuben of Dünaburg, Lipa Boslansky of Mir, and Elijah Eliezer Grodzenski of Vilna, should be added to the official rabbinical commission, which had hitherto consisted entirely of men of affairs and secular scholars. Relations with the Russian government Together with Yisrael Salanter, he was active in opposing the anti-semitic decrees of the Russian government. Spektor visited St. Petersburg twice to take part in conferences held there on the situation of the Jews after the riots of 1881. He successfully opposed the proposed establishment of a new rabbinical school like those in Vilna and Zhitomir, but failed to induce the government to recognize the synagogue rabbis instead of the government rabbis as the heads of Jewish communities. In 1889, Spektor was elected an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia, whose philosophy he said was compatible with traditional Judaism. He identified with the traditional rabbinate but refrained from any confrontation with the young Haskala movement. In 1889, Spektor opposed the proposed celebration of his rabbinical jubilee. He failed to save the Volozhin yeshiva from being closed by the government, but sponsored the "Kovnoer Perushim" as a substitute. He participated in the Kovno kollel and the Hovevei Zion movement. He was the anonymous friend who induced Samson Raphael Hirsch to write Ueber die Beziehung des Talmuds zum Judenthum (an 1884 defense of Talmudic literature against anti-Semitic slanders in Russia). Spektor died at Kovno on 6 March 1896. Institutions named after him include Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS, part of Yeshiva University) and the Knesses Beis Yitzchok Kaminetz of Baruch Ber Leibowitz. He had a daughter and three sons including Hirsch Rabinovich, who was maggid (preacher) of Vilna and later succeeded his father as rabbi of Kovno. Works Be'er Yitzchak, (Königsberg, 1858), responsa Ein Yitzchak, (part i., Wilna, 1889; part ii., ib. 1895), responsa Nachal Yitzchak, (part i., Wilna, 1872; part ii., ib. 1884), on parts of the Shulchan 'Aruk, Choshen Mishpat References Rabbi Ephraim Shimoff: Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor - Life and letters. Jacob ha-Levi Lipschitz (Spektor's secretary for twenty-six years), Toledot Yiẓḥaḳ, Warsaw, 1897 (in Yiddish, Gaon Yiẓḥaḳ, Wilna, 1899); Der Israelit, Mayence, 1897, No. 15; Eisenstadt, Dor Rabbanaw we-Soferaw, iii. 31-33, Wilna, 1901; Eliezer Hillel Aronson, Erez ba-Lebanon, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1879; Rosenfeld, Sha'at ha-Kosher, in Aḥiasaf, 5659 (1899), pp. 71-80. External links Biography Rabbi Yitzchok Elchanan Spektor Spektor family 1817 births