Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:19, 11 November 2021

RabbiYitzchok Hutner
Yitzchok Hutner at a Purim celebration in his yeshiva
Personal life
Born	1906 Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland)
Died	November 28, 1980(1980-11-28) (aged 74) Jerusalem
Religious life
Religion	Judaism

Yitzchok (Isaac) Hutner (Template:Lang-he; 1906–1980) was an American Orthodox rabbi and rosh yeshiva (dean).

Originally from Warsaw, Hutner first studied the Torah in Slabodka. He then traveled to Mandatory Palestine where he became a student of Abraham Isaac Kook, and narrowly escaped the 1929 Hebron massacre. After this, Hutner returned to Europe, where he befriended Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, maintaining friendships with both long after they had all established their own institutions in the United States.

Hutner was the long-time dean of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, New York, an older institution that grew under his leadership. Hutner's pedagogic style was a blend of the Hasidic and Misnagdic elements of his own family's origins. His discourses, called ma'amarim, contained elements of a Talmudic discourse, a Hasidic Tish and a philosophic lecture. Although his title was rosh yeshiva, Hutner's leadership style more closely resembled that of a rebbe who expected fealty from his followers.

In his later years, Hutner established Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok in Jerusalem, which is named after his own magnum opus. On one of his trips there, Hutner's plane was seized by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists in the Dawson's Field hijackings, which he survived.

Early life

Hutner was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a family with both Ger Hasidic and non-Hasidic Lithuanian Jewish roots. As a child he received private instruction in Torah and Talmud. As a teenager he was enrolled in the Slabodka yeshiva in Lithuania, headed by Nosson Tzvi Finkel, where he was known as the "Warsaw Illui" (Genius of Warsaw).

In 1925, having obtained a solid grounding in Talmud, Hutner joined a group from the Slabodka yeshiva that established the Hebron Yeshiva in Mandatory Palestine. He studied there until 1929, narrowly escaping the 1929 Hebron massacre because he was away for the weekend. Hutner then returned to Warsaw to visit his parents. He then moved to Germany, to study philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he befriended Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, two future rabbinical leaders then studying in Berlin. In 1932, he authored a book called Torat HaNazir.

In 1933, Hutner married Masha Lipshitz in Kobryn. She was born in Slutsk and raised in the United States. That same year, the couple traveled to Mandatory Palestine, where they remained for about a year. Hutner reconnected with his mentor Abraham Isaac Kook, and completed his research and writing of his Kovetz Ha'aros on Hillel ben Eliakim's commentary on midrash sifra.

Rabbinic and teaching career

In March 1934 Hutner moved to the United States (his wife having preceded him by six months) and settled in Brooklyn, where Hutner joined the faculty of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. Sometime between 1935 and 1936 he was appointed office manager of the newly established high school division of the Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin known as Mesivta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. In 1940, after receiving permission from the rosh yeshiva, Yaakov Moshe Shurkin, he began to give a class to the 4th year of the post high school program. Founded in 1904, it was the oldest elementary yeshiva in Brooklyn. Over the years he built up the yeshiva's post-high school beth midrash division and became Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin's senior rosh yeshiva. In this effort he also received the help of Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz who headed Brooklyn's Yeshiva Torah Vodaas. Hutner was able to construct an environment that produced young Talmudic scholars in the model of their compatriots in Eastern Europe. By 1940 he had established a post-high-school beth midrash with hundreds of students.

Nevertheless, at Chaim Berlin, students were allowed to combine their yeshiva study with afternoon and evening classes at college, mainly Brooklyn College and later Touro College. Hutner took great pride in the secular accomplishments of his students insofar as they fit into his vision of a material world governed by the principles of a spiritual Torah way of life. One of his closest disciples, Israel Kirzner, is an economist who edited Hutner's written works, Pachad Yitzchok. Many of Hutner's disciples earned doctorates, often with his blessing and guidance, including his daughter and only child, Bruria David, who obtained her PhD at Columbia University's department of philosophy as a student of Salo Baron. She subsequently founded and became the dean of Beth Jacob of Jerusalem, a prominent Jewish women's seminary that caters to young women from Haredi families in the United States. Her dissertation discussed the dual role Zvi Hirsch Chajes as both a traditionalist and maskil (follower of the enlightenment).

The list also includes Ahron Soloveichik (law) rosh yeshiva, Aharon Lichtenstein (literature) rosh yeshiva, and Yitzhak Aharon Korff (law, international law and diplomacy). Many alumni of Hutner's yeshiva have attained success as attorneys, accountants, doctors, and in information technology.

In the 1950s, he established a kollel (post graduate division for married scholars) to continue their in-depth Talmudical studies. This school, Kollel Gur Aryeh, was one of the first of its kind in America. Many of his students became prominent educational, outreach, and pulpit rabbis. He stayed in touch with them and was involved in major communal policy decision-making as he worked through his network of students in positions of leadership.

Hutner established Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok in Har Nof, Jerusalem, which he named for his book of the same name. He died in 1980, and was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery in East Jerusalem.

Methodology

Hutner's methodology and style was complex, controversial, and difficult to pigeonhole. While placing great emphasis on intellectually penetrating Talmudic study and analysis, emotionally he veered towards the Hasidic-style, and more-so than his Lithuanian-style colleagues reared as Misnagdim could tolerate. The core of his synthesis of different schools of Jewish thought was rooted in his studies of the teachings of Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609) a scholar and mystic known as the Maharal of Prague. Various pillars of Hutner's thought system were likely the works of the Vilna Gaon and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. He would only allude in the most general ways to other great mekubalim (mystics) such as the Baal Shem Tov, the Ari, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbitz and many other great Hasidic masters, as he did with the works of Kabbalah such as the Zohar.

Hutner initiated a number of changes in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin that differed greatly from the mussar (ethics) yeshiva practice in Slabodka. He abolished the half-hour learning session in mussar and replaced it with one of ten or fifteen minutes.

Hutner viewed secular studies as essential for attending college, learning a profession and becoming self-supporting. He obtained, together with Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, a charter from the New York State Board of Regents to set up a combined yeshiva and college. However, this plan was dropped at the insistence of Aharon Kotler.

Hutner developed a style of celebrating Shabbat and the Jewish holidays by delivering a type of discourse known as a ma'amar. It was a combination of Talmudic discourse, Hasidic celebration (tish), philosophic lecture, group singing, and when possible, like on Purim, a ten-piece band was brought in as accompaniment. Many times there was singing and dancing all night. All of this, together with the respect to his authority that he demanded, induced in his students an obedience and something of a "heightened consciousness" that passed into their lives transforming them into literal Hasidim of their rosh yeshiva, who in turn encouraged this by eventually personally donning Hasidic garb (levush) and behaving like something of a synthesis between a rosh yeshiva and a rebbe. He also instructed some of his students to do likewise.

Relationships with other rabbis

During his stay in Palestine, Hutner became a disciple of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine, to whom he was distantly related. Both men had a philosophical and mystical mind-set that made them kindred spirits. Like Kook, the young Hutner eventually developed a warm attitude toward non-religious Jews who were seeking to become more religious. After Kook became associated with the Mizrachi movement, Hutner began to distance himself from him. Even so, Hunter maintained cordial relations with Kook's son and heir Zvi Yehuda Kook and other prominent students of Kook's such as Moshe-Zvi Neria. Hutner eventually became a member of the non-Zionist Haredi Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (Council of Torah Sages) of Agudath Israel of America following his immigration to the United States.

Hutner's work Pachad Yitzchok contains no overt reference to Kook. A few of Hutner's early students recall Hutner's lengthy comments regarding Kook. Eliezer Waldman said that Hutner told them that "Rav Kook was 20 times as great as those who opposed him". Similarly, Moshe Zvi Neria heard Hutner say that "if I would not have met Rav Kook, I would be lacking 50% of myself".

While staying in Berlin, Hutner developed a friendship with Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Hutner referred to Soloveitchik as a "gadol" (a foremost Torah scholar of the time). The three maintained close personal relations throughout their lives, though each differed markedly in Torah hashkafa (weltanschauung). Nevertheless, each developed a unique bridge and synthesis between the Eastern European world-view and a Western European way of thinking. This enabled them to serve successfully as spiritual leaders after each of them immigrated to the United States of America.

Citing an anonymous source, Hillel Goldberg alleges that Hutner became a fierce critic of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic group and the "personality cult built up around" Schneerson. However the evidence is that he corresponded regularly with Schneerson throughout his lifetime, seeking his views on a variety of halakhic, chassidic and kabbalistic subjects, and occasionally seeking his blessing. Hutner also had several lengthy private audiences with Schneerson, during which they conversed for long periods of time.

Hutner appointed Soloveitchik's younger brother, whom he had tutored in Warsaw, Ahron Soloveichik (later to head his own yeshiva in Skokie near Chicago, Illinois) as head of his own Yeshivas Rabbi Chaim Berlin. Ahron Soloveichik completed a Doctorate in law at New York University at the same time that he lectured in Hutner's Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin.

In the early 1940s, Hutner asked a friend from Slabodka, Saul Lieberman to become a dean-Talmudical lecturer in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. Lieberman instead accepted an offer from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), the seminary of Conservative Judaism.

Hutner had a number of disagreements with some of the religious scholars who taught in his yeshiva. These disputes were usually not over ideology, but about positions in the school. He eased out many of the older rabbis who were his contemporaries in favor of his disciples. Rabbis Prusskin (a first cousin to his wife), Goldstone, Shurkin, Snow, Avrohom Asher Zimmerman and others are among them. Though Hutner was, by all accounts, quite steadfast in his opinions, he was not above begging forgiveness from those he had slighted, even when they had initiated attacks on him, and adopting a conciliatory tone.

Hutner appointed Slabodka yeshiva educated Avigdor Miller as the Mashgiach ruchani ("spiritual mentor and supervisor") of the yeshiva. After the yeshiva relocated to Far Rockaway, New York in the 1960s, Miller resigned from his position due to the difficulties a daily commute from Brooklyn entailed.

TWA hijacking

In the late 1960s he began to visit Israel again, planning to build a new yeshiva there. On 6 September 1970, he and his wife, daughter, and son-in-law Yonasan David were returning to New York on TWA Flight 741 when their flight was hijacked by the PFLP Palestinian terrorist organization. The terrorists freed the non-Jewish passengers and held the Jewish passengers hostage on the plane for one week, after which the women and children were released and sent to Cyprus. The hijacked airplanes were subsequently detonated. The remaining 40-plus Jewish men – including Hutner, David, and two students accompanying Hutner, Meir Fund and Yaakov Drillman – and male flight crew continued to be held hostage in and around Amman, Jordan; Hutner was held alone in an isolated location while Jews around the world prayed for his safe release. The terrorists tried to cut off his beard, but were stopped by their commanders. Hutner was reunited with the rest of the hostages on 18 September, and was finally released on 26 September and flown together with his family members to Nicosia, Cyprus. Israeli Knesset Member Menachem Porush chartered a private plane to meet the Hutners in Nicosia, and Willie Frommer, a former student, gave him his own shirt and tallit katan, since Hutner's tallit, tefillin, shirt, jacket and hat had been confiscated during his three-week ordeal. On 28 September Hutner and his group were flown back to New York via Europe, and were home just in time for the first night of Rosh Hashana.

Published work

In 1938 Hutner published a short booklet of halakhic (Jewish law) decisions sourced in the Sifra but not cited in the Babylonian Talmud. Many years later, he published what is considered to be his magnum opus, and which he named Pachad Yitzchok, ("Fear Isaac", meaning the God whom Isaac feared). He called his outlook Hilchot Deot Vechovot Halevavot, ("Laws 'Ideas' and 'Duties Heart'") and wrote in a poetic modern-style Hebrew reminiscent of his original mentor Abraham Isaac Kook's style, even though almost all of Hutner's original lectures were delivered in Yiddish.

Notable students

He was a mentor to figures in modern Jewish outreach, such as David Weiss Halivni, who became a prominent scholar at Conservative Judaism's JTSA. Another was a cousin to Shlomo Carlebach, who was appointed as the mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor) at the Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, but who split with Hutner on policy matters in the 1970s. They were both Holocaust survivors who Hutner took upon himself to raise as his own "sons" together with others in similar circumstances. Hutner is known to have given semikha to Carlebach, during the days that the latter was still with Lubavitch.

Other students included Yonasan David (his son-in-law) and Aharon Schechter, his successors as rosh yeshivas of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin; Aharon Lichtenstein, son-in-law of Joseph B. Soloveitchik and rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel; Pinchas Stolper of the Orthodox Union and founder of NCSY who followed Hutner's guidelines in setting up this youth outreach movement; Yaakov Feitman, prominent rabbi, past President of the Young Israel Council of Rabbis and disseminator of Hutner's views; Shlomo Freifeld who set up one of the first full-time yeshivas for baal teshuva students in the world; Joshua Fishman, leader and executive Vice President of Torah Umesorah the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools; Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe of Boro Park; and Noah Weinberg founder and head of Aish Hatorah as well as his brother Yaakov Weinberg of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore.

See also

• Haredi Judaism

References

1. ^ Gerber, Alan Jay (August 5, 2015) "Ravs Kook and Hutner, zichronum livracha", The Jewish Star. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
2. ^ "Joseph Soloveitchik (1903-1993)", Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
3. ^ Goldberg, Hillel (Winter 1987). "Rabbi Isaac Hutner: A Synoptic Interpretive Biography". Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. 2 (4): 18–46 (29 pgs). JSTOR 23259487. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
4. "FamilySearch: Sign In".
5. "FamilySearch: Sign In".
6. "FamilySearch: Sign In".
7. "Notables". harhazeisim.org. International Committee of Har HaZeitim. Retrieved October 22, 2020. Yitzchok Hutner, rosh yeshivas Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, Brooklyn, New York
8. https://hyperleap.com/topic/Yitzchok_Hutner
9. Kaplan, Lawrence (Fall 1980). "Rabbi Isaac Hutner's "Daat Torah Perspective" on The Holocaust: A Critical Analysis". Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. 18 (3): 235–248 (14 pgs). JSTOR 23258776. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
12. "Looking Before And After – Yudaica". 2007-10-07.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
13. Goldberg, Hillel. Between Berlin and Slobodka: Jewish transition figures from Eastern Europe, Ktav Publishing House, 1989, ISBN 978-0-88125-142-5, p. 79: "Rabbi Hutner relentlessly sustained a biting critique of the Lubavitcher movement on a number of grounds…", p. 187 footnote 41: "Rabbi Hutner was opposed to the personality cult built up around the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and to the public projection of both the Rebbe and the Lubavitch movement, by the movement, through public media-print and broadcast journalism, books, film, and the like."
14. Some of this correspondence has been published in Igros Kodesh, Kehot 1986–2008 Volumes 7- pp. 2, 49, 192, 215, 12- pp. 28, 193, 14- pp. 167, 266, 18- pp. 251, 25- pp. 18–20, and 26- p. 485
15. Mibeis Hagenozim, S.B. Levine, Kehot 2009, pp. 88–98 where copies of Hutners' actual letters are included alongside the relevant section
16. Mibeis Hagenozim, S.B. Levine, Kehot 2009, p. 88
17. RabbiHutner, Yitzchok. Pachad Yitzchok, Gur Aryeh, 2007, Vol.9 p. 273
18. Hutner, Yitzchok. Pachad Yitzchok, Gur Aryeh, 2007, Vol.9 pp. 283, 291
19. Emanuel Perlmutter (September 23, 1970). "Information Here Meager". New York Times.
20. Bin-Nun, Dov and Ginsberg, Rachel. "He Swallowed My Papers To Save Me". Mishpacha, 14 September 2011, pp. 34–43.
21. "HebrewBooks.org Sefer Detail: קונטרוס -- הוטנר, יצחק". www.hebrewbooks.org.
22. "Rav Hutner's view on the Holocaust". October 1977.

External links

• Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner... by Matis Greenblatt. (PDF), ou.org
• Terror in Black September: An Eyewitness Account about 1970 hijacking mentioning Rabbi Hutner's captivity
• A master teaches his disciple about the value of small gestures
• ...Rabbi Hutner's Implicit Theology of the Holocaust by Lawrence J. Kaplan. (PDF), hakirah.org
• ...An Appreciation of Rav Yitzchok Hutner by Yaakov Feitman, mishpacha.com

v t e Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah
Europe World Agudath Israel	Past members Avraham Mordechai Alter Meir Arik Dovid Bornsztain Shlomo Zalman Breuer Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky Meir Simcha of Dvinsk Moshe Mordechai Epstein Avraham Yaakov Friedman Chaim Ozer Grodzinski Yisrael Meir Kagan Aharon Kotler Yitzchak Zelig Morgenstern Meir Dan Plotzky Yitzhak Yaakov Rabinovich Sholom Dovber Schneersohn Meir Shapiro Chaim Soloveitchik Zalman Sorotzkin Yehuda Leib Tsirelson Shmuel Dovid Ungar Elchonon Wasserman Menachem Ziemba
Israel Agudat Yisrael Degel HaTorah	Past members Pinchas Menachem Alter Simcha Bunim Alter Yisrael Alter Shlomo Zalman Auerbach Yosef Shalom Eliashiv Aryeh Finkel Nosson Tzvi Finkel Avraham Yaakov Friedman Avraham Yaakov Friedman Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi Yisroel Moshe Friedman Levi Yitzchak Horowitz Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz Isser Zalman Meltzer Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg Yitzchok Scheiner Elazar Menachem Shach Yitzchak Isaac Sher Yochanan Sofer Zalman Sorotzkin Dov Yaffe Shabsi Yogel Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman Gershon Edelstein Baruch Weisbecker Present members Yaakov Aryeh Alter Nachum Dov Brayer Menachem Mendel Hager Yisroel Hager Zvi Elimelech Halberstam Mayer Alter Horowitz Yissachar Dov Rokeach Moshe Hillel Hirsch Dov Lando Baruch Dov Povarsky Yitzchok Zilberstein Eliezer Yehuda Finkel
United States Agudath Israel of America	Past members Dovid Feinstein Moshe Feinstein Mordechai Shlomo Friedman Mordechai Gifter Refael Reuvain Grozovsky Shlomo Heiman Levi Yitzchak Horowitz Yitzchok Hutner Yaakov Kamenetsky Chaim Mordechai Katz Aharon Kotler Shneur Kotler Avraham Yaakov Pam Yaakov Perlow Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman Gedalia Schorr Eliezer Silver Joseph B. Soloveitchik Baruch Sorotzkin Yisrael Spira Elya Svei Mendel Zaks Aaron Schechter Present members Elya Brudny Hillel David Aharon Feldman Yosef Chaim Frankel Aharon Dovid Goldberg Yaakov Horowitz Shmuel Kamenetsky Malkiel Kotler Shlomo Miller Yerucham Olshin Yosef Harari Raful Yitzchok Sorotzkin Shimon Yehuda Svei
Category

• 1906 births
• 1980 deaths
• Haredi rosh yeshivas
• Hijacking survivors
• Haredi rabbis in Israel
• American Haredi rabbis
• Philosophers of Judaism
• Lithuanian Haredi rabbis
• Polish Haredi rabbis
• Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents
• Burials at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives
• Writers from Brooklyn
• Writers from Warsaw
• People from Warsaw Governorate
• Orthodox rabbis from New York City
• Slabodka yeshiva alumni