Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan
Avrohom Eliyahu (Elya) Kaplan (; 1890–1924) was a prominent Ashkenazi Orthodox rabbi. He was born in Kėdainiai, a town in the Kaunas County in Lithuania. He was born an orphan, and named Avrohom Elya for his deceased father, who had died suddenly at the age of 33 several months before his son's birth. At about this time, Reb Avraham Elya's mother remarried a man from Telshe (Reb Avraham Elya was very close to his stepfather, and called him "The Father"). Avraham Elya studied for several years in the renowned Yeshiva of Telshe. His poetic and passionate nature became legendary even at a young age. At 16, he was drawn to the spirit of the Mussar movement, and went to learn in the Talmud Torah in Kelm, the yeshiva founded by Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv. He left Kelm, however, shortly after his arrival and went to the famed yeshiva in Slabodka headed by Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, known as the "Alter of Slabodka", and Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, known by his pen name, "Levush Mordechai". Avraham Elya studied in Slabodka for seven years, until the outbreak of World War I left him stranded in his mother's home in Telshe. In Slabodka,