Yitzchok Hutner - Early Years

Early Years

Yitzchok Hutner was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a family with both Ger Hasidic and non-Hasidic Lithuanian Jewish roots. As a child he received private instruction in Torah and Talmud. As a teenager he was enrolled in the Slabodka yeshiva in Lithuania, headed by Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, where he was known as the "Warsaw Illui" ("prodigy"). Having obtained a solid grounding in Talmud, Hutner joined a group of the Slabodka yeshiva that established a new yeshiva in Hebron. He studied there until 1929, narrowly escaping the 1929 Hebron massacre because he was away for the weekend, on his way to see Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. It was during his stay in the British Mandate of Palestine that he became a disciple of Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine (as it was then known). The philosophical and mystical mind-set of both men made them kindred spirits. Like Kook, the young Hutner eventually developed a warm welcoming posture towards non-religious Jews who were seeking to become more religious. They viewed things in the context of the end of the Jewish exile, golus (galut), with the imminent coming of the messianic era.

In later years, when Kook's name became associated with the Mizrachi, part of the Religious Zionist Movement, Hutner, an eventual member of the non-Zionist Haredi Agudath Israel of America's Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah ("Council of Torah Sages"), sought to downplay his former association with Kook, even though he maintained cordial relations with Kook's son and heir Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and other prominent students such as Rabbi Moshe-Zvi Neria. Hutner's students recount that on Sukkot he would hang a portrait of Kook in his sukkah. When controversy arose regarding the conscription of religious girls (giyus banot) into the Israel Defense Forces after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the photo of Kook was removed and replaced with one of Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz who ruled that Jewish females are forbidden to perform National Service (Sherut Leumi) in lieu of army service. Finally, when Hutner composed and published his work Pachad Yitzchok there is no overt reference to any of Kook's own extensive works (although Kook's ideas and motifs permeate Hutner's work according to those familiar with both rabbis' writings). However, a select few of Hutner's early students are said to recall some of Hutner's lengthy comments to them regarding Kook, but none of them have ever written or repeated anything about what was said to them in a public forum. It has remained for the Religious Zionist teacher, Neria to republish the approbation that Kook had written and some correspondence between Kook and Hutner about it.