הרב ברל סולובייצ'יק

Rav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik (Tammuz 5676/1916–2 Adar I 5741/6 February 1981), known to all as Reb Berel and in English sources as Rabbi Berel Soloveitchik, was rosh yeshivat Brisk in Yerushalayim and the son of Rav Yitzchak Zev HaLevi Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav. He was born in Brisk d’Lita to Rav Yitzchak Zev and to Hendel, a great-granddaughter of Rav Meir Auerbach, and learned under his father. He said of himself that immediately after his bar mitzvah he learned the sefer of his grandfather, the Chiddushei HaGrach on the Rambam, and was baki in it by heart — that grandfather being Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, who founded the Brisker method of learning, whose own father was the Beit HaLevi, rav of Brisk. In his youth he began giving shiurim in Brisk and in Warsaw.

In the years of the Second World War he fled with his father to Warsaw, and in the end the two of them reached Eretz Yisrael. He married Ettel, daughter of Rav Yitzchak Weinstein and granddaughter of Rav Yehoshua Zimbalist, and at his father’s instruction began giving shiurim in his home. After his father’s petirah he opened a yeshiva in his father’s house, and talmidim came to it from Eretz Yisrael and from abroad; he gave shiurim on chumash as well, in which he took up matters of hashkafah. He was the cousin of Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik of America, who carried the very same full name.

He did not print his chiddushei Torah, nor did his sons bring them out after his petirah; the shiurim of his son Rav Avraham Yehoshua rest upon them, and his Torah is brought at length in the sefarim of his talmidim, such as the Minchat Avraham of Rav Avraham Noach Gerbuz and the chiddushim of Rav Avraham Gurwitz, among them Anfei Erez on hilchot gezeilah va’aveidah. From 5762 his shiurim on Zevachim, Menachot, Temurah and Bechorot began to appear, and further chiddushim from his Torah were printed at the end of the Chiddushei HaGriz on Sotah and in several volumes of the Torah journal Yeshurun. Among his talmidim were Rav Yerachmiel Ungarischer, rosh yeshivat Beit Medrash Elyon in Bnei Brak; Rav Avraham Erlanger of Kol Torah; Rav Avraham Gurwitz, rosh yeshivat Gateshead; Rav David Yitzchak Shapira, rosh yeshivat Be’er Yaakov; Rav Baruch Shmuel Deutsch; Rav Shlomo Katz, rosh yeshivat Chevron; Rav Yitzchak Sorotzkin; Rav Shimshon Pincus; and Rav Simcha Kessler. He was niftar on Friday, 2 Adar I 5741, and was buried on Har HaMenuchot; his son Rav Avraham Yehoshua Soloveitchik fills his place at the head of the yeshiva, and another son, Rav Moshe, serves there as a ram.