Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik of Brisk

Early years

Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik zt"l, known as the Brisker Rav and by the initials Griz, was born on 19 October 1886 in Volozhin, the son of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. Through his mother he was a grandson of Rav Refael Shapiro, a rosh yeshiva of the Volozhin yeshiva. He was also known as Velvel, the Yiddish form of Zev, which means wolf, and as "the Rov."

After the czarist authorities shut Yeshivas Volozhin, the family settled among the Jews of Brisk. Later he took his father's place as Rav of Brisk and became a guide for Torah study throughout the area.

Torah and leadership

He escaped the Holocaust and reached Eretz Yisroel, which was then under British rule. In Yerushalayim he reestablished the Brisk yeshiva and taught his talmidim just as his father had taught him. This path of study came to be called the Brisker derech. It is a way of learning Gemara that pairs a deep grasp of concepts with faithfulness to the text, and it leans especially on the Rambam's Mishneh Torah.

He was a leader of the Charedi community in Eretz Yisroel. He urged complete separation from the government, since its secular values stood, in his eyes, against the principles of Torah Judaism. He even objected to yeshivos and other Torah institutions depending on state funding. Rav Yoel Teitelbaum backed this position; Rav Elazar Shach took a different view.

His approach to halachah

The Rav was renowned for being strict in halachah. Part of the reason lay in the Brisker method, which divides each law into exact parts. Those parts can be recombined in fresh ways, opening possibilities that a person might do well to keep or avoid. Yet the method alone does not explain every one of his chumros (stringencies).

It is reported that in Yerushalayim he observed a second day of Yom Tov, something ordinarily done only outside Eretz Yisroel. He worried that in the days of the court's announcements, the emissaries who proclaimed the new month might never have reached the exact spot where he lived. To be safe, he kept the extra day.

Yet he did not always keep a well-known chumra. On Sukkos, certain foods must be eaten in the sukkah, and it is commendable, though not obligatory, to take every meal and drink there. The Rav ate and drank some foods outside it. His explanation was that he kept a stringency only where halachah might truly demand it, and here the leniency was beyond question.

Later years and passing

Near the end of his life, the Rav summoned his son Berel and Rav Elazar Shach. He reviewed with them the choices and stands he had taken over the years, asking them to weigh each one and say whether he had acted rightly.

He passed away in Yerushalayim on 9 Tishrei 5720 (11 October 1959). Afterward his sons, Berel and Meshulam Dovid among them, split the yeshiva into separate parts, and each son took along his own circle of followers.