Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein הרב אהרן ליכטנשטיין
head of the Har Etzion yeshiva; son-in-law and disciple of Rav Soloveitchik
He was born in Paris in 1933; the family fled the war to America, where he studied under Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner and under Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, whose daughter he married. At Harvard he took a doctorate in English literature—and remained a man of the Talmud.
In 1971 Rabbi Yehuda Amital called him to the Har Etzion yeshiva at Alon Shvut, and the two led it together for more than forty years. His lessons were built in the way of Brisk, yet he never separated law from conscience: he wrote on morality beyond halakhah, on the worth of worldly knowledge, on the fact that depth in Torah does not demand narrowness. From his yeshiva came the rabbis and teachers of religious Zionism for several generations. In 2014 he received the Israel Prize.
He died on 1 Iyar 5775 (2015) and was buried at Alon Shvut.
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Shiurei HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein — the lessons on the tractates
Scholarship
- Leaves of Faith and the essays — morality beyond halakhah, worldly knowledge
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Paris 1933, Harvard, Har Etzion from 1971, the prize in 2014, 1 Iyar 5775
Basis: documents and evidence.