Shmuel Halevi Schecter (Hebrew: שמואל הלוי שכטר; February 21, 1915 – September 30, 2000)[1][2] was a Canadian–American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, educator, and author.
Born in Quebec and raised in Baltimore, he traveled to Eastern Europe to study at the Mir Yeshiva as a teenager and at the Kelm Talmud Torah as a young married man.
[4] Together with his new friends and fellow students Nosson Meir Wachtfogel and Avigdor Miller, he attended a secret shiur in Mesillas Yesharim given by Yaakov Yosef Herman in a yeshiva dormitory.
[2] He remained at the Mir for four years[1] and received rabbinical ordination from the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel ("Reb Leizer Yudel").
[3] Traveling in a group with other students from Kelm, Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler and his wife, and Wachtfogel's bride, they took the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia to Vladivostok, and a ship to Brisbane, Australia.
[6] Years later, Schecter printed a commentary on Orchot Chaim LeHoRosh, a musar work, and recounted in the preface the final hours of the yeshiva and the speech given by Rabbi Movshovitz at the site of the slaughter, based on historical sources.
[1][2] Schecter, Wachtfogel, and Rabbi Hershel Genauer, all alumni of the Kelm Talmud Torah, established the first kollel in the United States in White Plains, New York in spring 1942.