הרב נפתלי צבי יהודה ברלין

Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (29 Cheshvan 5577/1816–28 Av 5653/1893), the Netziv of Volozhin, headed the Volozhin yeshiva for close to forty years and was among the gedolei Torah of nineteenth-century Lithuania. Born in Mir, the eldest son of Yaakov Berlin, a merchant and talmid chacham, he was descended on his father’s side from Rav Elchanan of Berlin, called “Rav Elchanan Baal HaTosafot,” and on his mother’s side from Rav Meir Eisenstadt, the Panim Meirot. At eleven he entered the Volozhin yeshiva, and at thirteen and a half Rav Yitzchak of Volozhin took him as a chatan for his daughter Reina-Batya. For some twenty-five years he sat quietly over his learning, his stature hidden by his humility until letters exchanged with the Radal, Rav David Luria — who later gave his haskamah to the first chelek of Haamek She’elah (5615/1855) — revealed it; from 5607/1847 he gave shiurim in the yeshiva.

When his brother-in-law R’ Eliezer Yitzchak was niftar young in 5613/1853, the Netziv was crowned rosh yeshiva, with Rav Yosef Dov Ber Soloveitchik, later of Brisk, as his second. The Netziv’s bekiut and peshat did not sit easily with Rav Yosef Dov’s charifut and pilpul, until gedolei hador, Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno among them, decided for the Netziv; after twelve years Rav Yosef Dov left for the rabbanut of Brisk, and his son Rav Chaim Soloveitchik later married the Netziv’s granddaughter. Under the Netziv, who signed himself “the one laden with the work,” the yeshiva grew from about a hundred bachurim to more than five hundred. After the petirah of Reina-Batya, mother of his son Rav Chaim Berlin, he married Batya Miriam Epstein, daughter of Rav Yechiel Michel Epstein, the Aruch HaShulchan; their sons were Rav Yaakov Berlin and Rav Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan).

His derech in learning turned back to the Geonim and the midreshei halachah: Haamek She’elah, on the She’iltot of Rav Achai Gaon, joins the mesorah of the Geonim to the sevara of the Rishonim, and in his search for exact nuschaot he gathered rare manuscripts. Each day he taught the parashah in the yeshiva, and from those shiurim grew his commentary on the Torah, Haamek Davar; he also wrote Rinah Shel Torah on Shir HaShirim, the teshuvot Meishiv Davar, and Meromei Sadeh on the Shas, printed after his petirah — his sons set no life story at the head of the shu”t, for he held such tellings to be bitul Torah. A lover of the yishuv of Eretz Yisrael, he was named at the Druskininkai conference of 5647/1887 one of the three advisory trustees of the Chovevei Zion, insisting that the building of the Land stand on shemirat hamitzvot, above all the mitzvot that depend on the Land.

In 5651/1891 the Russian education ministry demanded hours of secular studies from nine to three, an end to night seder, and diplomas for the yeshiva’s staff; the Netziv, who had agreed only that Russian be taught outside the yeshiva’s walls under a teacher who fears Shamayim, could not accept, and in Shevat 5652/1892 the yeshiva was closed by decree and its heads expelled. The closure of the house into which he had poured thirty-eight years, and the nine-thousand-ruble debt it left, broke his health, and his hope of being oleh to Eretz Yisrael went unfulfilled. He was niftar in Warsaw on 28 Av 5653/1893 and was buried there; Rav Chaim Soloveitchik was later buried at his side. Kibbutz Ein HaNetziv in the Beit She’an valley carries his name.