
Rav Kalman Zev Wissotsky studied under Rabeinu Yisroel Salanter in the Niviezer Beit Midrash in Kovno. Afterward , when his family moved to Moscow and became famous for their worldwide tea business, Rav Kalman Zev Wissotsky continued practicing his rebbe’s teachings. The sefer Tenu’as Hamussar describes him as “a man outstanding in his sterling character and his numerous activities.” The book relates how when he first moved to Moscow, he would draw the Cantonists, Jewish children who were conscripted into military service in Czarist Russia, closer to Judaism. He himself would sneak into the Kazarktin, where the Cantonists were held, teach them tefilla and dinim, celebrate yomim tovim, conduct a seder on Pesach and imbue them with love for the Torah and yiras shamayim. At the time, anyone who was involved with such activities was at risk of capital punishment. Rav Wissotsky’s daughter, Mrs. Leiba Miriam Gavronsky, established the Gavronsky Family Fund, which supported talented young men and adolescents who attended “the kibbutz of Torah study” in Ponovezh, Lithuania.