הרב שניאור קוטלר

Rav Yosef Chaim Shneur Kotler (5678/1918–3 Tammuz 5742/1982) was the rosh yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey, who built his father’s yeshiva into the largest institution of Torah learning in the world. Born in Slutsk, he was the son of Rav Aharon Kotler and a grandson of Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, and was named for his father’s father, Shneur Zalman Pines. He learned first from his father, then in the Kamenitz yeshiva, Knesses Beis Yitzchak, as a talmid of Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz. When the war drove the yeshivot to Vilna in 5700/1940 he became engaged to Rischel Friedman; he escaped to Eretz Yisrael while she was carried with the refugees to Shanghai, and they married in America after the war. Through the war years he learned in Yeshivat Etz Chaim in Yerushalayim under his grandfather Rav Isser Zalman, and heard the shiurim of Rav Yechezkel Sarna of the Chevron yeshiva and of Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav. In 5706/1946 he joined his father in America, entering the kollel of the yeshiva Rav Aharon had founded in Lakewood.

On his father’s petirah in 5723/1962, Rav Shneur took his place at the head of Beth Medrash Govoha. Where Rav Aharon had kept the yeshiva small and select, Rav Shneur opened its doors wide, and it grew from some 120 talmidim to more than a thousand at his passing. He sent talmidim out to found Lakewood-style kollelim in thirty cities — from New York and Toronto to Denver and Melbourne — and together with the mashgiach, Rav Nosson Meir Wachtfogel, pioneered the community kollel, in which avreichim learn by day and teach their community in the evenings. Within the yeshiva he instituted a program in which each chaburah learns a different masechta, so that most of Shas is learned at once, and he founded the journal Nehorai for the talmidim’s chiddushim. He sat on the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudath Israel of America, served the rabbinic boards of Torah Umesorah and Chinuch Atzmai, and labored for the Jews fleeing Russia and Iran.

He was niftar on 3 Tammuz 5742/1982 in Boston; tens of thousands accompanied him in Lakewood and Yerushalayim, and he was buried on Har HaMenuchot (Yerushalayim) beside his father and his grandfather. He had led the yeshiva nineteen years, seven months, and one day — to the day, the length of his father’s own tenure. His shiurim and shmuessen were printed after his passing as Noam Siach and Siach Erev, and he was succeeded by his son Rav Malkiel Kotler, together with Rav Dovid Schustal, Rav Yerucham Olshin, and Rav Yisroel Neuman.