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Yitzchok (Isaac) Hutner (1906–1980) was an Orthodox rabbi and American rosh yeshiva 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 Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, where he was known as the "Warsaw Illui" ("prodigy").

Early years

Having obtained a solid grounding in Talmud, Rabbi Hutner was sent to join an extension of the Slabodka yeshiva in Hebron. He studied there until 1929, narrowly escaping the 1929 Hebron massacre because he was away for the weekend, on his way to see Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. It was during his stay in the British Mandate of Palestine that he became a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine (as it was then known.) The philosophical and mystical mind-set of both men made them kindred spirits. Like Kook, the young Hutner eventually developed a warm welcoming posture towards non-religious Jews who were seeking to become more religious. They viewed things in the context of the end of the Jewish exile, golus (galut), with the imminent coming of the messianic era.

In later years, when Kook's name became associated with the Mizrachi, part of the Religious Zionist Movement, Hutner, an eventual member of the non-Zionist Haredi Agudath Israel of America's Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah ("Council of Torah Sages"), sought to downplay his former association with Kook, even though he maintained cordial relations with Kook's son and heir Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and other prominent students such as Rabbi Moshe-Zvi Neria. Hutner's students recount that on Sukkot he would hang a portrait of Kook in his sukkah. When controversy arose regarding the conscription of religious girls (giyus banot) into the Israel Defense Forces after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the photo of Kook was removed and replaced with one of Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz who ruled that Jewish females are forbidden to perform National Service (Sherut Leumi) in lieu of army service. Finally, when Hutner composed and published his work Pachad Yitzchok there is no overt reference to any of Kook's own extensive works (although Kook's ideas and motifs permeate Hutner's work according to those familiar with both rabbis' writings.) However, a select few of Hutner's early students are said to recall some of Hutner's lengthy comments to them regarding Kook, but none of them have ever written or repeated anything about what was said to them in a public forum. It has remained for the Religious Zionist teacher, Rabbi Moshe-Zvi Neria to republish the approbation that Kook had written and some correspondence between Kook and Hutner about it.

Travels and marriage

After the pogrom in Hebron in 1929, Hutner spent some years as a wandering scholar. First, he returned to Warsaw, from there going to study philosophy at the University of Berlin, but not for degree purposes; he was not interested in degrees or the jobs they could offer, but only in the actual material that the university taught him. During this period, in 1932, he wrote Torat HaNazir, a text dealing with the laws of the Nazarite, which he published containing an approbation from his mentor Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He also spent time familiarizing himself with the intellectual milieu of Germany.

He befriended two other future rabbinical leaders then studying philosophy in Berlin: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, later to become rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University in New York City, and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson who would become rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch in Brooklyn. The three were to retain close and cordial personal relations throughout their lives, even though each differed from the other radically in Torah weltanschauung (hashkafa). Nevertheless, each developed a unique bridge and synthesis between the Eastern European world-view connecting it with a Westernized way of thinking. This was a key factor enabling them to serve successfully as spiritual leaders in the United States of America.

After marrying his American-born wife, Masha Lipshitz, in Warsaw, Poland, in 1932, the couple spent about a year in Palestine where Rabbi Hutner completed his research and writing of his Kovetz Ha'aros on Hillel ben Eliakim's commentary on midrash sifra. He visited Europe in 1934 to collate manuscripts of Hillel ben Eliakim's commentary.

By 1935 the couple had emigrated to Brooklyn, New York where Hutner pursued his private studies, initially not actively seeking a formal position. However, he soon joined the faculty of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School (RJJ) and sometime between 1935–1936 was appointed first as a teacher then as principal of the newly established high school division of the Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin known as Mesivta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. The yeshiva had been the oldest elementary yeshiva in Brooklyn since 1904. During 1939 and 1940 he established the yeshiva's post-high school beth midrash division and became the senior rosh yeshivah of the entire Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. In this effort he also received the help of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz who headed Brooklyn's largest and more established Yeshiva Torah Vodaas. Under Hutner's charismatic leadership, Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin grew from relative obscurity to prominence, and with it grew his reputation in the world of Torah scholarship.

In the United States

Educational methods

His 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.

He was able to construct an intense curriculum and an environment that produced young Talmudic scholars who were viewed as being in the same league as their compatriots in Eastern Europe. By 1940 he had established a post-high school yeshiva, beth midrash with hundreds of students.

He viewed secular studies as essential in learning a profession for people to support themselves by eventually going to college and becoming professionals. Together with the dean of the Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz a charter to set up a combined yeshiva and college was obtained from the New York State Board of Regents. However, this plan was abandoned upon the insistence of Rabbi Aaron Kotler the anti-secular leader of the Lakewood yeshiva (Beth Medrash Gevoha), which would become the largest yeshiva of its kind in the United States, who wielded great influence and rabbinical power.

Hutner was well versed in many intellectual areas, even studying and refuting secular and non-traditional Jewish scholarship. It is alleged that Hutner once slapped a student who made a remark about a religious issue, saying to the student "You read that in Heschel!"

Mesivta Chaim Berlin high school

In 1936 Hutner established and pioneered a new yeshiva high school known as Mesivta Chaim Berlin. It was from the graduates of this school that Hutner went on the establish his post-high school, yeshiva in 1940. The school has continued as branch of the "Chaim Berlin" campus and network of schools presently located in Midwood, Brooklyn, New York City.

Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin

In 1940 Hutner founded and established the post-high school level Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. Hutner maintained a relatively liberal policy during his tenure at the helm of his own Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, allowing students to combine their day's learning in yeshiva together with attending college, mainly at Brooklyn College and later at Touro College in late afternoons and evenings. He would take 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 is the renowned economist, Rabbi Israel Kirzner who edited Hutner's written works, Pachad Yitzchok.

Kollel Gur Aryeh

In 1956 Hutner established a new graduate school for married post-graduate scholars to continue their in-depth Talmudical studies, who are paid a stipend to help support their young families. This was a kollel, (a post graduate division), the Kollel Gur Aryeh, one of the first of its kind in America. Many of its alumni became prominent educational, outreach, and pulpit rabbis. He stayed in touch with them and was intimately involved in major communal policy decision-making as he worked through his network of students in positions of leadership, and won over to his cause people who came to meet with him.

Influence on students

Many of Hutner's disciples went about quietly obtaining doctorates often with his blessings and guidance, including his daughter Rebbetzin Dr. Bruria Hutner David (philosophy). The list includes Rabbis Shlomo Teichman (mathematics) founder and dean of Bais Yaakov Academy, Shlomo Braunstein (statistics) rosh yeshiva and principal, Shlomo Ribner (psychology) psychologist and rosh yeshiva, Moshe Homnick (psychology), Ahron Soloveichik (law) rosh yeshiva, Zecharia Dor-Shav (Dershowitz) (psychology) educator, Aharon Lichtenstein (literature) rosh yeshiva, Dr Abraham J. Tannenbaum (education), Joseph Thurm (information technology), Naftoli Meir Langsam (education), Yedidyah Langsam (chemistry & computer science), Chaim Feuerman (education), Zvhil-Mezbuz Rebbe Grand Rabbi Yitzhak Aharon Korff (law, international law and diplomacy). Many alumni of his yeshiva have attained success as attorneys, accountants, doctors, and in information technology.

His daughter: Dr. Bruria Hutner David

His daughter and only child, Rebbetzin Bruria Hutner David, obtained her Ph.D. at Columbia University in the department of philosophy as a student of Salo Baron. She subsequently founded and became the dean of a major post-high school seminary for Jewish women in Jerusalem known as Beth Jacob of Jerusalem (BJJ) that caters to young women from mostly English-speaking Haredi families in the United States. Her dissertation discussed the dual role of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes as both a traditionalist and maskil ("follower of the enlightenment"). Some have noted the remarkable parallels between her own father and Rabbi Chajes, the subject of her dissertation.

Appointments of mashgiach ruchanis

Hutner appointed Slabodka yeshiva educated Rabbi 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, Rabbi Miller resigned from his position due to the difficulties a daily commute from Brooklyn entailed.

Hutner subsequently chose one of his disciples, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (not the singer) to be the next mashgiach ruchani, but when Hutner made plans to move on to Israel, a fierce struggle and dispute ensued with Carlebach, that has not been settled to this day.

Maamorim and special celebrations

Hutner developed a style of celebrating Shabbat and the Holy Days, Yom Tov, 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 ("devotees") of their rosh yeshiva, who in-turn, encouraged this by eventually personally donning Hasidic garb, (begadim) and behaving like something of a synthesis between a rosh yeshiva and a rebbe. He also instructed some of his students to do likewise.

Designated heirs

While making plans to return to Israel in the 1960s, Hutner also groomed two designated heirs to succeed him as the rosh yeshivas of the Rabbi Chaim Berlin Yeshiva he headed. One was Rabbi Aaron Schechter who remains the rosh yeshiva until the present time in the Brooklyn, New York yeshiva. The other was Hutner's son-in-law Rabbi Yonason David who accompanied Hutner to Israel and who remains as the rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok in Jerusalem, Israel. Hutner's teachings and influence, and by implication his authority, is spread through these two leading disciples who have since Hutner's passing in 1980 built up a large following of their own. While Aaron Schechter remains at the helm of the Brooklyn yeshiva, Yonasan David is primarily based in Jerusalem, but commutes from Israel back to America several times a year to share co-equal status as rosh yeshiva in the Brooklyn yeshiva with Aaron Schechter.

Attitude to other movements

Attitude to Chabad

Hutner had a mixed attitude to the Chabad movement. While he had positive personal relationships and friendships with the sixth Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn and his son-in-law who became the seventh Rebbe of Chabad Menachem Mendel Schneerson, he nevertheless would often openly critique the leaders and the movement to his closest students. He would not allow them to attend Chabad farbrengens (celebrations) and it was rare that a disciple of Hutner would cross over to Chabad even though they shared the same neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn where Hutner's Kollel Gur Aryeh Talmudic graduate school was located from 1956 to 1966.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, a noted senior editor of the Intermountain Jewish News states that Hutner became a fierce critic of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic group and the idolization of its Rebbe Schneerson: Goldberg states that: "The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Schneerson (born 1902)... still met with Rabbi Hutner's opposition -- and also against a background of earlier friendship...But all this could not obscure a clear breach. Rabbi Hutner relentlessly sustained a biting critique of the Lubavitcher movement on a number of grounds." and that

"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 Lubavicth movement, by the movement, through public media -- print and broadcast journalism, books, film, and the like."

Hutner conveyed this to his own followers and they have retained Hutner's antipathies to Chabad.

While there is evidence of an ongoing relationship and mutual respect between them. Hutner corresponded quite frequently with Schneerson over the years, often seeking guidance and input on a variety of halachic, chasidic and kabalistic subjects, as well as occasionally seeking Schneersons blessing. He also visited Schneerson for 'yechidus' (private meetings with a Rebbe) a number of times, whereupon the they conversed for lengthy periods of time.

Attitude to Yeshiva University

Hutner discouraged students from attending Yeshiva University although he welcomed a number of Yeshiva University studnets into his own yeshiva. He reportedly forbade his students from attending any lectures given by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik while at the same time apponting Soloveitchik's younger brother, whom he had tutored in Warsaw, Rabbi 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.

Return to Israel

Partnership with Rabbi Dov Schwartzman

In the early 1960s Hutner began to plan for a return to Israel and build a yeshiva in Jerusalem. He entered into a partnership with Rabbi Dov Schwartzman and together they pioneered and built up the Bais Hatalmud yeshiva. However the partnership broke up. Hutner returned to America while he left a core of students at a small kollel known as Ohr Eliyahu.

1970 hijacking

In the middle of his travels on September 1970, shuttling between Israel and America, Hutner, his wife Masha, his daughter and her husband Rabbi Yonasan David were on board the TWA Flight 741 to New York, that together with three other jetliners, was hijacked by the Black September terrorists. After three weeks in captivity, during which the war of Black September in Jordan was fought, Hutner and his family together with the other Jewish hostages were released.

Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok

A few years prior to his passing, Hutner and his son-in-law Yonason David finally made a more permanent move to Israel, leaving their Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn under the control of Hutner's disciple Rabbi Aaron Schechter. They formally established a new yeshiva and called it Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok. They had hoped to set it up in a central part of Jerusalem but lost a struggle with the Belz Hasidim and were forced to find a new location in the Har Nof area that extends from Jerusalem. Hutner did not live to see the completion of the new building, but he took charge of all the details in the initial stages of laying the groundwork, recruiting a nucleus of a small group of students and, most importantly, gaining the trust and approval of his rabbinic colleagues who were not sure what to make of this long-lost but now new arrival of a famous rabbi with hard to fathom methods and thought systems. Hutner received a particularly strong boost from the famous mussar rabbi, Rav Shlomo Wolbe who devoted himself to letting it be known about Hutner's greatness in all areas of Torah study.

Publications

In 1938 Rabbi Hutner published a short booklet regarding halachic 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 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 Kook's style, even though almost all of Hutner's original lectures were delivered in Yiddish.

The core of his synthesis of different schools of Jewish thought was rooted in his deep studies of the teachings of Rabbi 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, Rabbi Elijah, (1720–1797) and of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707–1746). He would only allude in the most general ways to other great mystics, in Hebrew mekubalim, such as the Baal Shem Tov (founder of Hasidism), the great mystic known as the Ari who lived in the late Middle Ages, the founder of Chabad Hasidism, the Baal HaTanya Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbitz and many other great Hasidic masters as well as to the great works of Kabbalah such as the Zohar.

Mentor to others

He was the mentor of some famous as well as controversial figures in modern Jewish outreach to other Jews, such as Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, who split with Hutner and became a prominent scholar at Conservative Judaism's Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA). Another was a cousin to Rabbi 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 smicha to Carlebach, during the days that the latter was still with Lubavitch.

In the early forties Hutner asked a friend from Slabodka, Rabbi Saul Lieberman to become a dean-Talmudical lecturer in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. Lieberman instead accepted an offer from the 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. Hutner attempted (and did in many cases) ease out the older rabbis who were his contemporaries in favor of his disciples. Rabbi Prusskin (a first cousin to his wife), Rabbi Goldstone, Rabbi Shurkin, Rabbi Snow, Rabbi Avrohom Asher Zimmerman and others are among them. While Hutner was steadfast in his opinions he was nevertheless not above asking forgiveness from those he may have slighted, even when they had initiated attacks on him,and adopting a conciliatory tone.

He did initiate a number of changes in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin that differed greatly from the mussar yeshiva practice in Slabodka. He abolished the half hour learning session in mussar ("ethics") and replaced it with one of ten or fifteen minutes. He changed the traditional mussar lecture to a maamar utilizing Maharal instead of the classical mussar approach to Torah study.

Notable alumni

His students included Rabbis: Yonasan David (his son-in-law) and Aharon Schechter, his successors as Rosh Yeshivas of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin; Hirsch Diskind, son-in-law of Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky and long-time Dean of Bais Yaakov School for Girls in Baltimore, Aharon Lichtenstein, son-in-law of Rabbi 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; Avrohom Davis, founder of the Metzudah religious books series; Shlomo Freifeld who set up the one of the first full-time yeshivas for baal teshuva students in the world, and who personally maintained an open relationship with Lubavitch; Joshua Fishman, leader and executive Vice President of Torah Umesorah the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools; Avrohom Kleinkaufman, a lecturer in Yeshiva of Far Rockaway and translator of the Genesis and Exodus volumes of the Metzuda Bible Commentary of Rabbi Solomon and the Kol Sasson Sephardic Siddurim and Machzorim; Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe of Boro Park; Meir Bilitzky, senior rabbi of Young Israel of New Hyde Park; Noah Weinberg founder and head of Aish Hatorah and his brother Yaakov Weinberg of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore; Yosef Katzenstein of Copenhagen, author of Kol Chayil and Lema'an Achai; Feivel Cohen of Brooklyn, author of "Badei HaShulchan" and world renowned posek, Dovid Cohen, rabbi of Congregation Gvul Yaabetz and an author of a number of books on Jewish theology, and Ahron Kaufman Rosh HaYeshiva of Yeshiva Gedola of Waterbury, son in law to Feivel Cohen.

Final years

In the late 1960s he began to visit Israel again planning to build a new yeshiva there. In 1970 he, together with his wife, daughter and son-in-law Rabbi Yonasan David, were captured by the PFLP Palestinian terrorist organization, who were in turn attacked by King Hussein's army in Amman, Jordan where the hostages found themselves after being let off the planes that were hijacked. Many Jews prayed fervently for his safe release.

In spite of this experience, Hutner continued his efforts to build his yeshiva in Israel. Eventually it was established and named Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok based on his life's work, in Har Nof, Jerusalem. He died in 1980 and is buried in Jerusalem.

See also

• Haredi Judaism
• List of rosh yeshivas

References

1. Goldberg, Hillel. Between Berlin and Slobodka: Jewish transition figures from Eastern Europe, Ktav Publishing House, 1989, ISBN 9780881251425, pages 78-79. P. 187 footnote 41
2. Goldberg, Hillel. Between Berlin and Slobodka: Jewish transition figures from Eastern Europe, Ktav Publishing House, 1989, ISBN 9780881251425, P. 188 end of footnote 41
3. Some of the correspondence has been published in Igros Kodesh, Kehot 1986-2008 Volumes 7- pgs.2,49,192,215, 12- pgs. 28,193, 14-pgs.167,266, 18- pgs.251, 25- pgs.18-20, & 26, p'485
4. Mibeis Hagenozim, S.B. Levine, Kehot 2009, p.88-98 where copies of the actual letters are provided alongside the relevant section
5. Mibeis Hagenozim, S.B. Levine, Kehot 2009, p.88
6. http://www.hebrewbooks.org/41263
7. Hutner, Yitzchok. Pachad Yitzchok, Gur Aryeh, 2007, Vol.9 p.273
8. Hutner, Yitzchok. Pachad Yitzchok, Gur Aryeh, 2007, Vol.9 p.283,291

External links

• 20 years since his passing (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
• Lecture on Rosh HaShana based on Rabbi Hutner's teachings
• Rabbi Hutner's Greatness in Torah and Worship

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• 1906 births
• 1980 deaths
• Rosh yeshivas
• Haredi rabbis in Israel
• American Haredi rabbis
• Philosophers of Judaism
• Lithuanian Orthodox rabbis
• Polish Orthodox rabbis
• Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents
• Burials at the Mount of Olives (Jewish)