Yitzchok Hutner - Mentor To Others

Mentor To Others

He was a mentor to some famous as well as controversial figures in modern Jewish outreach to other Jews, such as Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, who split with Hutner and became a prominent scholar at Conservative Judaism's Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA). Another was a cousin to Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who was appointed as the mashgiach ruchani ("spiritual supervisor") at the Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, but who split with Hutner on policy matters in the 1970s. They were both Holocaust survivors who Hutner took upon himself to raise as his own "sons" together with others in similar circumstances.

Hutner is known to have given smicha to Carlebach, during the days that the latter was still with Lubavitch.

In the early forties Hutner asked a friend from Slabodka, Rabbi Saul Lieberman to become a dean-Talmudical lecturer in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. Lieberman instead accepted an offer from the JTSA, the seminary of Conservative Judaism.

Hutner had a number of disagreements with some of the religious scholars who taught in his Yeshiva. These disputes were usually not over ideology, but about positions in the school. Hutner attempted (and did in many cases) ease out the older rabbis who were his contemporaries in favor of his disciples. Rabbis Prusskin (a first cousin to his wife), Goldstone, Shurkin, Snow, Avrohom Asher Zimmerman and others are among them. Though Hutner was, by all accounts, quite steadfast in his opinions, he was nevertheless not above begging forgiveness from those he had slighted, even when they had initiated attacks on him, and adopting a conciliatory tone.

He did initiate a number of changes in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin that differed greatly from the mussar yeshiva practice in Slabodka. He abolished the half hour learning session in mussar ("ethics") and replaced it with one of ten or fifteen minutes. He changed the traditional mussar lecture to a maamar utilizing Maharal instead of the classical mussar approach to Torah study.

His students included Rabbis: Yonasan David (his son-in-law) and Aharon Schechter, his successors as Rosh Yeshivas of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin; Hirsch Diskind, son-in-law of Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky and long-time Dean of Bais Yaakov School for Girls in Baltimore, Aharon Lichtenstein, son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel; Pinchas Stolper of the Orthodox Union and founder of NCSY who followed Hutner's guidelines in setting up this youth outreach movement; Avrohom Davis, founder of the Metzudah religious books series; Shlomo Freifeld who set up one of the first full-time yeshivas for baal teshuva students in the world; Joshua Fishman, leader and executive Vice President of Torah Umesorah the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools; Avrohom Kleinkaufman, a lecturer in Yeshiva of Far Rockaway and translator of the Genesis and Exodus volumes of the Metzuda Bible Commentary of Rabbi Solomon and the Kol Sasson Sephardic Siddurim and Machzorim; Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe of Boro Park; Meir Bilitzky, senior rabbi of Young Israel of New Hyde Park; Noah Weinberg founder and head of Aish Hatorah and his brother Yaakov Weinberg of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore; Yosef Katzenstein of Copenhagen, author of Kol Chayil and Lema'an Achai; Feivel Cohen of Brooklyn, author of "Badei HaShulchan" and world renowned posek, Dovid Cohen, rabbi of Congregation Gvul Yaabetz and an author of a number of books on Jewish theology, and Ahron Kaufman Rosh HaYeshiva of Yeshiva Gedola of Waterbury, son in law to Feivel Cohen.