Brisker Method - History

History

The famed yeshiva of Volozhin, arguably the first modern yeshiva, favored a traditionalist approach towards Talmudics under the leadership of the Netziv, which often required absorbing a great amount of Talmudic material to acquire a "general Talmudic feel" before analyzing a topic. Later, however, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik became a lecturer at Volozhin. At this point, around the year 1880, Rabbi Chaim's new methods first became public.

However, as Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik suggested in his eulogy for the Brisker Rov, the full, true "Brisk approach" as we know it today was not developed until Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik had been rabbi of Brisk for many years. The notes that Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik used for his lectures at the yeshiva of Volozhin (years before he assumed the Brisk pulpit) are still extant today, and the approach found there is not as well-developed as in (his and others') later published works. The notes could best be described as "proto-Brisk lomdus", a term which could be used regarding the works of the Beis HaLevi as well. Several modern scholars agree with this notion of "proto-Brisk", and it can be heard in the lectures of Rabbi Dr. Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff. Nonetheless, as seen above, even "proto-Brisk" was already different enough and popular enough to cause significant tension at the Volozhin yeshiva.

An additional major influence on the "Brisk approach" was a Rabbi Mendel Epstein of Slutzk. Rabbi Chaim "Brisker" Soloveitchik spent several early teenage years in Slutzk, where Rabbi Epstein served as his melamed (Judaics teacher for pre-college levels). Rabbi Chaim later claimed that much of the "Brisker derech" attributed to him was founded on Rabbi Epstein's approach; however, as a small town's melamed, Rabbi Epstein and his ideas never achieved fame. Thus, Rabbi Mendel Epstein's contribution to the "Brisker approach" might be compared to that of Sir Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton's mentor, to calculus.

The Brisker method has a certain parallel in the Dor Revi'i (commentary on Hullin) of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner. Many scholars had been perplexed by the Rambam's rulings, as they had been used to understanding the Talmud according to the Franco-German school of Rashi and Tosafot, as opposed to the Babylonian Geonic school followed by Rambam. Rabbi Glasner insisted that Rambam's interpretations follow perfectly from the Talmud once he is interpreted on his own terms. Rabbi Glasner's methods coincided remarkably with those Rabbi Haim; Rabbi Glasner's methods caused a sensation in the Lithuanian yeshivot in the late 1920s and early 1930s yeshivot, producing astonishment that a Hungarian rabbi had independently formulated a method so similar to Rabbi Haim's.