Rav Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz

Early years

Rav Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz zt"l, the Chazon Ish, was born in 1878 in Kosava, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Rav Shmaryohu Yosef, was the Rav of Kosava, and his mother was Rasha Leah, daughter of Rav Shaul Katzenelbogen. He had an older brother, Meir, and younger brothers Yitzchok and Moshe. Rav Yitzchok later succeeded their father as Rav of Kosova, and in mid-1942 he, his wife and their daughter were shot to death in their home by the Germans. He also had four older sisters, Henya Chaya, Badana, Tzivia and Batya, and a youngest sister, Pesha Miriam, who married Rav Yaakov Yisroel Kanievsky.

He was educated by his father, the Av Beis Din of Kosava. As a young man he was sent to learn under Rav Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk. The Brisker method did not appeal to him, and it later became clear that he in fact opposed it. After two years he returned home and went on learning with his father in the beis din.

He married Bashe Bei of Kvėdarna and formed a close bond with Rav Moshe Rosen, the Nezer HaKodesh. In his married life he lived very simply. His wife supported them while he sat day and night learning Torah in depth, and they had no children. Alongside his Torah learning he also acquired knowledge of sciences such as astronomy, anatomy, mathematics and botany.

Torah and leadership

In 1911 he published his first work, on parts of the Shulchan Aruch including Orach Chaim, in Vilna. He published it anonymously under the title Chazon Ish, meaning “vision of a man.” The word Ish alludes to the initials of his two names, Avrohom Yeshaya, in the way that the Yaavetz took his own pen-name. In later years he became known almost only by this title.

About 1920 he moved to Vilna and grew close to Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, whom he consulted in all religious and communal matters. With the encouragement of Rav Chaim Ozer and the help of Rav Avrohom Yitzchok Kook, he settled in Eretz Yisroel in 1933. He made his home in Bnei Brak, and that home became the address for thousands seeking guidance. He was especially close there with his brother-in-law, Rav Yaakov Yisroel Kanievsky, and with Rav Yaakov Galinsky.

On arriving in Eretz Yisroel he gave huge amounts of time and energy to Seder Zeraim, which deals mainly with the laws of the Land, so as to answer the many halachic questions of living a life in Eretz Yisroel that is faithful to the Torah. Among his practical rulings were those on the use of the milking machine on Shabbos and on hydroponic growing in the shemittah year.

He held no official position, yet he became a recognized authority in halachah and in Jewish life throughout the world, though he published few responsa. He stayed apart from the religious-political movements that were active before and after the founding of the State in 1948, yet he had enormous influence on the chareidi community in Eretz Yisroel, whose formative years were the years he lived there.

People brought their social and political questions to him as well. David Ben-Gurion and Yitzchok Ben-Zvi once visited him to discuss questions of religion and state. The Chazon Ish explained his view with an image from the Gemara in Sanhedrin 32b: two camels meet on a narrow mountain path, and the one without a load gives way to the one carrying cargo. In the same way, he said, secular society should defer to religious society, which carries the cargo of the mesorah.

A variety of etrog is named for him. After one Succos he gave Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz a packet of seeds from the etrog he had used, and told him to plant them in his yard. Lefkowitz had no experience in farming, but he planted and watered them as instructed, and the tree grew and bore fruit. Every year the Chazon Ish came to choose his etrog from that tree, as did his brother-in-law and other leading rabbanim. Lefkowitz let growers take cuttings to plant orchards of etrogim that carried the Chazon Ish’s hechsher.

Teachings and seforim

The Chazon Ish wrote more than forty seforim in Hebrew. He was a scholar, yet he applied himself to practical problems and worked hard to strengthen Torah life and its institutions. Unlike Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, he did not use a fixed method of analysis for Gemara. He preferred a varied and intuitive approach, closer to that of the Rishonim.

He did not think that mussar had to be studied as a separate subject, because he felt that a life given to Torah learning would lead a person onto the right path. He particularly rejected elements of Novardok, such as extreme self-effacement and withdrawal from others. He also held that a ruling of the Shulchan Aruch cannot be reversed because manuscripts were discovered which its author did not know. This view is sometimes misunderstood to mean that manuscripts can play no role in halachah at all.

Rav Aharon Leib Steinman once said in a shiur that the Chazon Ish had vast knowledge of Kabbalah, and that he had learned with a hidden kabbalist known as the Baker of Kosovo.

Later years and passing

The Chazon Ish spent the last twenty years of his life, from 1933 to 1953, in Eretz Yisroel. He passed away in Bnei Brak on 15 Cheshvan 5714 (1953).

Legacy

Several multi-volume biographies of the Chazon Ish have been published in Hebrew, among them Peer HaDor and, more recently, Maaseh Ish. The Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, who had been one of his talmidim, drew a fictional portrait of him in the novel The Yeshiva, where he appears as Reb Avrohom-Shaye Kosover.