Brisk Tradition and Soloveitchik Dynasty - The Soloveitchik Dynasty

The Soloveitchik Dynasty

The Soloveitchik family includes many significant rabbinical forebears, most notably Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, famed Talmudist and founder of the Volozhin yeshiva. Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner was a student of the Vilna Gaon, and thus some students of Brisk talk of a line of tradition extending "from Moses at Sinai, to Joshua, to the Elders ... to the Vilna Gaon, to Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, and then to the Soloveitchik dynasty".

Some scholars, however, begin the Soloveitchik dynasty with Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik known as the Beis HaLevi, as he was the first rabbi of Brisk surnamed Soloveitchik. More significantly, the "Brisker style" described below can already be found to some degree in the Beis HaLevi's works, which is not the case for earlier ancestors.

All members of the Soloveitchik family are descended from the Tribe of Levi and thus sometimes go by the descriptor HaLevi. The surname "Soloveitchik" comes from the word for nightingale in Slavic languages; it was chosen by the family because the primary duty of the Levites in the Temple in Jerusalem was singing.