Early Life and Biography
He served as the town rabbi of the Jewish community in Brisk and was the rosh yeshiva ("dean") of its yeshiva. He fled the Holocaust and moved to Palestine, where he re-established the Brisk Yeshiva in Jerusalem and continued educating students as his father did, in what would come to be known as the Brisker derech (Yiddish: the "Brisk method" or "Brisk approach") of analyzing the Talmud. This form of analysis stressed conceptual understanding combined with strict adherence to the text; it is also characterized by its emphasis on Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. After his death, the yeshiva split, each son taking part of the following of the yeshiva.
Soloveitchik was a leader of the Haredi community in Israel and advocated complete withdrawal of participation with the Israeli government, the secular ideals and values of which were, in his view, antithetical to the principles of Orthodox Judaism. He went as far as opposing the reliance on government funding in support of yeshivas and other Torah institutions. This viewpoint was supported by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum and disputed by Rabbi Elazar Shach.
Before Soloveitchik died, he called his son (Berel Soloveitchik) and Elazar Shach and reviewed the decisions and positions he had taken during his lifetime, so that they could scrutinize them and tell them if in their opinion, he had acted properly.
Read more about this topic: Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or biography:
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“There are two births: the one when light
First strikes the new awakened sense;
The other when two souls unite,
And we must count our life from thence,
When you loved me and I loved you,
Then both of us were born anew.”
—William Cartwright (1611–1643)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)