Yitzchok Hutner - in The United States

In The United States

Hutner was able to construct an intense curriculum and an environment that produced young Talmudic scholars who were viewed as being in the same league as their compatriots in Eastern Europe. By 1940 he had established a post-high-school beth midrash with hundreds of students.

He viewed secular studies as essential in learning a profession for people to support themselves by eventually going to college and becoming professionals. Together with the dean of the Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, a charter to set up a combined yeshiva and college was obtained from the New York State Board of Regents. However, this plan was abandoned upon the insistence of Rabbi Aharon Kotler then head of the Lakewood yeshiva.

Hutner did, however, maintain his relatively liberal policy during his tenure at the helm of his own Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, allowing students to combine their day's learning in yeshiva together with attending college, mainly at Brooklyn College and later at Touro College in late afternoons and evenings. He would take great pride in the secular accomplishments of his students insofar as they fit into his vision of a material world governed by the principles of a spiritual Torah way of life. One of his closest disciples is the renowned economist, Rabbi Israel Kirzner, who edited Hutner's written works, Pachad Yitzchok. Many of Hutner's disciples went about quietly obtaining doctorates often with his blessings and guidance, including his daughter and only child, Rebbetzin Dr. Bruria David, who obtained her PhD at Columbia University in the department of philosophy as a student of Salo Baron. She subsequently founded and became the dean of a major seminary for Jewish women in Jerusalem known as Beth Jacob of Jerusalem (BJJ) which caters to young women from Haredi families in the United States. Her dissertation discussed the dual role of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes as both a traditionalist and maskil ("follower of the enlightenment"). Some have noted the remarkable parallels between her own father and Rabbi Chajes, the subject of her dissertation.

The list also includes Rabbis Shlomo Teichman (mathematics) founder and dean of Bais Yaakov Academy, Shlomo Braunstein (statistics) rosh yeshiva and principal, Shlomo Ribner (psychology) psychologist and rosh yeshiva, Moshe Homnick (psychology), Ahron Soloveichik (law) rosh yeshiva, Zecharia Dor-Shav (Dershowitz) (psychology) educator, Aharon Lichtenstein (literature) rosh yeshiva, Dr Abraham J. Tannenbaum (education), Joseph Thurm (information technology), Naftoli Meir Langsam (education), Yedidyah Langsam (chemistry & computer science), Chaim Feuerman (education), Zvhil-Mezbuz Rebbe Grand Rabbi Yitzhak Aharon Korff (law, international law and diplomacy). Many alumni of Rabbi Hutner's yeshiva have attained success as attorneys, accountants, doctors, and in information technology.

Hutner was well-versed in many intellectual areas, even studying and refuting secular and non-traditional Jewish scholarship. It is alleged that Hutner once slapped a student who made a remark about a religious issue, saying to the student "You read that in Heschel!"

Hutner appointed Slabodka yeshiva educated Rabbi Avigdor Miller as the Mashgiach ruchani ("spiritual mentor and supervisor") of the yeshiva. After the yeshiva relocated to Far Rockaway, New York in the 1960s, Miller resigned from his position due to the difficulties a daily commute from Brooklyn entailed.

Hutner developed a style of celebrating Shabbat and the Jewish holidays by delivering a type of discourse known as a ma'amar. It was a combination of Talmudic discourse, Hasidic celebration (tish), philosophic lecture, group singing, and when possible, like on Purim, a ten-piece band was brought in as accompaniment. Many times there was singing and dancing all night. All of this, together with the respect to his authority that he demanded, induced in his students an obedience and something of a "heightened consciousness" that passed into their lives transforming them into literal Hasidim of their rosh yeshiva, who in turn encouraged this by eventually personally donning Hasidic garb, (begadim) and behaving like something of a synthesis between a rosh yeshiva and a rebbe. He also instructed some of his students to do likewise.