Early Struggles
Spektor was born in Resh, government of Grodno, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Israel Issar, who was rabbi of Resh and had a leaning toward Hasidism, was his first teacher. Young Isaac Elhanan made remarkable progress in his Talmudical studies, and was soon famous as an "ilui", or prodigy. At the age of thirteen he married, and settled with his wife's parents in Vilkovisk, where he remained for six years. He was for a short time the pupil of R. Elijah Schick, and later he studied under Benjamin Diskin, rabbi of Vilkovisk, who, much impressed by his agreeable manners and great ability, accepted him as a pupil and as the fellow student of his son Joshua Leib Diskin, afterward rabbi of Brisk.
Spektor received his "semikah", or ordination, from Benjamin Diskin and from R. Isaac Ḥaber of Tiktin (later of Suwałki). The 300 rubles which his wife had brought him as dowry having been lost through the bankruptcy of his debtor, Spektor, being unable to rely any longer on his father-in-law for support, became in 1837 rabbi of the small adjacent town of Sabelin, with a weekly salary of five Polish gulden. He remained there in great poverty for about two years, when he went to Karlin and introduced himself to R. Jacob of that town (author of "Mishkenot Ya'aḳob"), then considered one of the foremost rabbis of Russia. Jacob was so favorably impressed by the extensive learning and the carefulness of the young man that he recommended him to the first community desiring a rabbi, namely, that of Baresa (Biaroza), where the salary was one ruble a week. Spektor entered upon his new charge in 1839, and made rapid progress. A dispute which he had with Rabbi Isaac of Shavel concerning the formula of a document relating to divorce ended when Isaac, who was much older and better known than Spektor, acknowledged the latter to be in the right.
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