Yissocher Frand

Yissocher Frand is an American Charedi Orthodox rabbi and author. He is a senior lecturer at Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, MD. Raised in Seattle, Washington, he attended Ner Yisrael as a student and progressed to become a maggid shiur (lecturer). He is well known within the Orthodox Jewish community as a skilled orator, and has given hundreds of invited lectures over the past decades.

Frand is best known for his popular parsha shiurim (lectures). His weekly lectures, started in the late 1980s, are hosted live at the Agudath Yisrael synagogue in Baltimore, and are broadcast all over the world by the Torah Conferencing Network in synagogues or Jewish community centers in over 70 cities in North America, Europe, Israel, South Africa, and Australia. The wide distribution of his lectures make them one of the best attended Jewish lectures in the world. Building on points from the weekly Torah reading, his lectures generally follow a particular style. He typically addresses a matter of halakha/Jewish law for the bulk of his lecture, while reserving the closing portion for a midrashic/homiletic talk which evinces an ethical or religious character. The Yad Yechiel Institute was founded to distribute audio recordings of Rabbi Frand's lectures, and they are sold over the Internet and in Jewish bookstores everywhere. Project Genesis publishes the midrashic portions of his weekly talks online, and the distribution of these transcriptions via email have added to his popularity. Revised versions of these shiurim have been collected and republished in book form. Rabbi Frand also gives a popular yearly lecture before Yom Kippur known as his annual "Teshuva Drasha."

He is a board member and frequent speaker on behalf of the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, an organization dedicated to educating the Jewish public on the laws of lashon hara (harmful speech). Rabbi Frand has also been a featured speaker multiple times at the Siyum HaShas, held once every seven-and-a-half years, the past few having taken place before sold-out crowds at major sporting venues in the New York metropolitan area.

In June 1993, a man entered the Ner Yisroel Beis Medrash and approached Rabbi Frand, while holding a brown bag. Upon reaching Rabbi Frand, he suddenly pulled out a kitchen knife and stabbed the Rabbi. A melee ensued, with students rushing to Frand's defense. Josh Adler, a Ner Yisroel student was injured by the assailant, as he attempted to defend Rabbi Frand. Eventually it emerged that the man was a mentally deranged individual, who had recently been released from a State institution.