הרב יוסף דוב סולובייצ'יק

Rav Yosef Dov (Yoshe Ber) HaLevi Soloveitchik (5580/1820–4 Iyar 5652/1892), called for all generations after his sefarim the Beit HaLevi — in English sources usually the Beis Halevi — was rav of Slutsk and of Brisk, and the first of the Brisker dynasty. He was born in Nesvizh to Rav Yitzchak Ze’ev, and was a great-grandson of Rav Chaim of Volozhin. At ten he was sent to Volozhin to learn under a private melamed, and at bar mitzvah he entered the yeshiva itself. Of his youth it is told that Rav Shlomo Kluger, the rav of Brod, loved to learn with him, and said when the young man was leaving the city that he had resolved every one of his kushyot but one — how he would manage to part from him.

In 5614/1854 he was appointed second to the rosh yeshiva of Volozhin, the Netziv, Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin. His shiurim ran sharp and full of pilpul, a derech the gifted talmidim of the yeshiva loved, standing beside the Netziv’s way of bekiut and straight depth in the sugya; differences between the two led him in time to leave the position. In 5625/1864 he became rav of Slutsk in place of Rav Yosef Feimer, on the word of Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor. In Slutsk he went himself into the chadarim, and seeing the want of the poor children he arranged that lunches be served them at the community’s expense; his son Rav Chaim said that while he himself answered the needs people brought him, his father went out and discovered on his own what people needed. Among those who learned from him in Slutsk were Rav Yosef Rosen, afterward the Rogatchover Gaon, Rav Zalman Sender Shapiro, and Rav Tzvi Hirsch HaKohen Wolk.

His firm hand in communal matters, standing for the poor of the city, set him against the parnasim, and around Pesach 5635/1875 he laid down the rabbanut of Slutsk and moved to Warsaw, where he lived some four years in poverty; there, misnaged though he was, he grew close to the Gerrer Rebbe, Rav Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter. In 5639/1879 he was crowned rav of Brisk in place of Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, who had been forced to flee to Eretz Yisrael, and he carried that rabbanut until his last day.

In his Teshuvot Beit HaLevi (first chelek, Vilna 5623/1863) the first buds of the analytic derech later called the way of Brisk can be seen — as in his chiddush dividing the mitzvah of talmud Torah into two dinim, one a preparation for the keeping of the mitzvot and one a tachlit in itself. Beside the teshuvot stand Beit HaLevi on the Torah, in the way of drush, drawing tight the bond between mikra and midrash, and Yad HaLevi, printed without his name in few copies. Worn by years of illness and grieved by the closing of the Volozhin yeshiva, he was niftar on 4 Iyar 5652/1892; at the levayah, held that same day, his son Rav Chaim was crowned rav of Brisk in his place. He is buried in Brisk.