Career
He was an important Talmudic scholar and one of the earliest rosh yeshivas in America. He entered the Volozhin yeshiva when he was only twelve years old, and remained there until its close in the winter of 1892. He then went to learn with his mentor, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, in Brisk for the next four years.
lieutenant was Rav Chaim that referred to him as the "Meitscheter Illui" (" genius Meitchet").
Chaim Soloveitchik commented that in all his life, he had never come upon a genius of the measure of the Meitscheter. Polachek went on to become the rosh yeshiva in yeshivas in Lida and Białystok.
At the invitation of Dov Revel, Polachek arrived in America in 1922 to become a rosh yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) the rabbinical school of Yeshiva University and its Yeshiva College, America"s first yeshiva. He taught at RIETS for six years until his sudden passing in 1928.
