Rabbi Schorr was born in Istrick, Poland, a shtetl near Przemyśl, in 1910, the sixth of Avraham Halevi Schorr"s seven children. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Gedalyahu, a highly respected scholar and close Hasid of the Sadigerer Rebbe, a descendant of Rabbi Yisrael of Rizhin.
He was regarded as the "first American Gadol" (Torah giant), an expression coined by Rabbi Aharon Kotler. Indeed, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the famed rosh yeshiva of Chachmei Lublin, remarked that Rabbi Schorr had the most brilliant mind he ever encountered in America, and one of the most brilliant in the entire world. He said this when Rabbi Schorr was only nineteen years old.
The Schorr family came to the United States in 1922, settling first on the Lower East Side and then moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Gedalia dedicated himself to learning with a passion that he maintained throughout his life. He soon caught the eye of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, principal of Mesivta Torah Vodaas.
When Rabbi Schorr was only twenty-one years old, Rabbi Mendlowitz appointed him to conduct the highest class in Mesivta Torah Vodaas. In later years, when Rabbi Shlomo Heiman, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, became ill and was unable to carry on his duties for a year and a half, Rabbi Heiman asked that Rabbi Schorr replace him for the duration of the illness.
When World World War II was dawning, Rabbi Schorr, under pressure from his family and the United States. Consul in Poland, returned to America against the advice of Rabbi Kotler.
After Rabbi Mendlowitz died in 1948, Rabbi Schorr was appointed principal of Torah Vodaas in his stead. He began functioning as rosh yeshivah in 1958 after the death of Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Reuven Grozovsky, delivering weekly classes in Beth Medrash Elyon. Legacy
A sampling of his shiurim on the Torah can be found in the sefer Ohr Gedalyahu (Light of Gedalyahu), a compendium of novel and lucid discourses on Jewish thought that he delivered in the last three years of his life.
He died in Brooklyn, New York, on July 7, 1979 and was interred on the Har HaZeisim.
From 1970 until his death, he served as a member of the presidium of Agudath Israel of America.
