הרב יוסף דב הלוי סולובייצ'יק

Rav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik (12 Adar 5663/1903–18 Nissan 5753/1993), known to generations of talmidim simply as the Rav, and in the sefarim as the Grid, was rosh yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) at Yeshiva University in New York and among the spiritual leaders of Orthodox Jewry in America. He was born in Pruzhany, a scion of the house of Brisk: grandson of Rav Chaim of Brisk, named for his great-grandfather the Beit HaLevi, and on his mother’s side a grandson of Rav Eliyahu Feinstein, rav of Pruzhany. His father, Rav Moshe Soloveichik, was his rebbi muvhak — he wrote that all his friends knew he had one clear teacher, “Abba Mari,” and from their learning together came the Chiddushei HaGram v’HaGrid on seder Kodashim. In his bar mitzvah year he sent a notebook of his chiddushim to his grandfather Rav Chaim, who saw great things ahead for him.

In his twenties he went to the University of Berlin, where he learned philosophy and wrote a doctorate on the thought of Hermann Cohen while keeping a full seder of intensive Talmud study; in Berlin he grew close to Rav Chaim Heller, whom he counted among his rebbeim. In 1931 he married Dr. Tonya Lewit of Vilna — Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski was mesader kiddushin — and in 1932 the couple settled in Boston. There he served the Orthodox community as rav, founded the Maimonides School in 5697/1937, the first Jewish day school in New England, and in 5699/1939 opened a yeshiva named Heichal Rabbeinu Chaim HaLevi after his grandfather. In 5695/1935 he visited Eretz Yisrael and delivered a shiur in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav that veterans of Volozhin came to hear.

On the petirah of his father in Shevat 5701/1941 he was called to succeed him at the head of RIETS, where he said shiur for more than forty years and gave semichah to close to two thousand rabbanim who went out to lead kehillot across America and beyond. His yearly shiur on his father’s yahrtzeit ran four and five hours before audiences of thousands, and stands in print as the Shiurim LeZecher Abba Mari. In 5720/1960 he declined to be a candidate for the chief rabbinate of Israel, explaining that he could not leave the field of chinuch, which he saw as the center of his life.

Alongside the shiurim stand his works of machshavah: Ish HaHalachah (5704/1944), Ish HaEmunah HaBoded — The Lonely Man of Faith (5725/1965) — Al HaTeshuvah from his oral discourses, and many volumes of shiurim and derashot printed from his manuscripts and his talmidim’s notes after his petirah. He was niftar on erev Shabbat chol hamoed Pesach, 18 Nissan 5753/1993; his place at the head of the yeshiva was filled by his brother, Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, and among his talmidim and family are Rav Tzvi Schachter, rosh kollel at RIETS, and his sons-in-law Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, rosh yeshiva of Har Etzion, and Rav Yitzchak Twersky of Harvard.