הרב חיים מוולוז'ין

Rav Chaim of Volozhin (7 Sivan 5509/1749–14 Sivan 5581/1821), Reb Chaim Volozhiner, was the foremost talmid of the Vilna Gaon and the father of the Lithuanian yeshiva world. Born in Volozhin on the second day of Shavuot to Yitzchak, parnas of the kehillah, and Rivka, he learned under Rav Refael HaKohen, rav of Minsk and later of Hamburg, and then under the Shaagat Aryeh, Rav Aryeh Leib Gunzberg, at that time rav of Volozhin. From nineteen he learned under the Gaon, whom he held to be a gadol without equal in many generations; in his humility he protested publicly that whoever calls him the Gaon’s talmid “is simply mistaken” — yet the Gaon’s sons, in their introduction to the Biur HaGra on Orach Chaim, count him first among the talmidim. From about 5534/1774 he served as rav of Volozhin, and apart from a single year in Vilkomir he held the post until his petirah.

In the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah of 5563/1802 he issued an open letter to the lovers of Torah in Lita, and soon after founded Yeshivat Etz Chaim — the Volozhin yeshiva, mother of the yeshivot. He began with ten local talmidim maintained at his own expense — it is told that his wife sold her jewelry toward their upkeep — and lived to see the yeshiva in its own building with a hundred talmidim before him, one of whom went on to found the yeshiva of Mir. He taught the Gaon’s derech: straight, penetrating analysis of the sugya to reach the intent of the Rishonim, without pilpul — the pattern later followed in Slabodka, Mir, Ponevezh, Kelm, Kletsk, and Telz. The yeshiva stood for close to ninety years, until it was closed in 1892.

His sefer Nefesh HaChaim, published by his son Rav Yitzchak in 5584/1824, sets out in four she’arim the responsibility given to man, the workings of tefillah, the ways of Kabbalah, and above all — in the famous fourth shaar — the teaching that uninterrupted Torah study upholds all the worlds: were the world empty of it even one moment, all the worlds would be destroyed. It stands as the measured answer of the Torah world of Lita to the chassidic movement, far milder in tone than the battles of his rebbi. He also wrote Ruach Chaim on Pirkei Avot, and his teshuvot appear in Chut HaMeshulash together with those of his son-in-law Rav Hillel Fried and his grandson Rav Eliezer Yitzchak Fried; many more teshuvot were lost in a fire in 5575/1815.

He stood behind the aliyah of the Gaon’s talmidim that began in 5568/1808, serving as the rabbinic authority of the Vilna body that sustained the Perushim in Eretz Yisrael and guided the affairs of their kollel. He was niftar on 14 Sivan 5581/1821 and buried in Volozhin; his son Rav Yitzchak took up the leadership of the yeshiva, and among his descendants is the Soloveitchik family of Brisk.