Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon (Jerusalem)

Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon (Hebrew: ישיבה אור אלחנן, also spelled Ohr Elchanan) is a Lithuanian-style Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem. The yeshiva was initially established in 1953 in Los Angeles, California, by Rabbi Simcha Wasserman, who named it in memory of his father, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, rosh yeshiva in Baranowicz, who was murdered in the Holocaust in Lithuania. The yeshiva operated in Los Angeles from 1953 to 1977, when it was sold to the Chabad movement. After Wasserman immigrated to Jerusalem, he established another Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon in the Ezrat Torah neighborhood in 1979. A second branch was opened in the Romema neighborhood in 1993. Ohr Elchonon enrolls hundreds of boys in yeshiva ketana and yeshiva gedolah, and close to 100 married men in its kollel. Additional yeshiva ketana branches have been established in the Israeli cities of Modiin Illit, Rishon Letzion, and Tiberias.