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Yechezkel Sarna (; 1890–1969) was a disciple of Nosson Tzvi Finkel, spiritual mentor of the Slabodka yeshiva. He was sent by Finkel to move the yeshiva from Europe to Hebron in 1925, and following the 1929 Hebron massacre, to Jerusalem. In 1934, he became rosh yeshiva (dean).
When he was 11 he was sent to the Ohr Hachaim yeshiva in Slabodka, headed by Tzvi Levitan, a student of l Simcha Zissel Ziv. In 1902, he went to Malczyce to study under the Chief Rabbi there, Zalman Sender Kahana-Shapiro. Later he returned to Slabodka to study under Chaim Rabinowitz in Knesses Beis Yitzchok.
In 1904 Sarna was one of the students who went with Rabinowitz when he moved to the Telz Yeshiva. When the yeshiva temporarily closed in 1906, Sarna returned to Maltsch, studying under Shimon Shkop. A year later he returned to Knesses Yisroel Yeshiva in Slabodka.
Shortly after the Slabodka yeshiva had arrived in Minsk, which was near the battlefront, it was forced to flee to a safer city, Kremenchuk. Sarna did not rejoin the yeshiva and remained in Smilowitz, studying for a year and a half in an inn with the students of the Raduń Yeshiva. During this period, he developed close relationships with the Chofetz Chaim and Raduń's rosh yeshiva, Naftoli Trop.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Sarna returned to the Knesses Yisroel yeshiva in Kremenchuk. Two years later he married Pesha Miriam Epstein, the daughter of Moshe Mordechai Epstein, one of the roshei yeshiva (deans).
Shortly after World War I the yeshiva left Russia and returned to Slabodka, which after the war was re-annexed to Lithuania. He held no official position in the yeshiva there.
In the course of the 1929 Hebron massacre, 24 of the yeshiva's students had been killed and many were injured. Sarna succeeded in reestablishing the yeshiva in Jerusalem. He renamed it "Hebron", in memory of those who were massacred in that city. While Leib Chasman, the yeshiva's mashgiach, dedicated himself to encouraging the students, Sarna took the task of fund raising for the yeshiva, traveling extensively.
In a letter to Isaac Sher of Slabodka, he wrote, "The first weeks were very difficult, since the students were both destitute and despondent. But by the 15th of Elul, they returned to themselves, and by Rosh Hashana, the yeshiva began to function in full force."
When his father-in-law, Moshe Mordechai, died in 1933, four years after the Hebron Massacre, Rav Yechezkel was officially appointed rosh yeshiva of Hebron.
In 1936, the yeshiva's mashgiach, Yehuda Leib Chasman died and Sarna replaced him.
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