The Netziv of Volozhin הנצי"ב מוולוז'ין
Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, forty years at the head of the Volozhin yeshiva
The Netziv married a granddaughter of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin and from 5614 headed the yeshiva Chaim had founded—the very institution from which the whole Lithuanian model of study began. Under him several hundred men studied in Volozhin at once, among them future rabbis and also men who later went into literature and into Zionism.
His Torah commentary Ha'amek Davar and his work on the Sheiltot, Ha'amek She'elah, are still studied. In 5652 the authorities demanded that compulsory secular subjects and Russian be introduced in the yeshiva; the Netziv refused the terms, and the yeshiva was closed. He died a little over a year later in Warsaw.
He supported Hovevei Zion, and in 1887 was among those to whom the movement turned on its religious side—an unusual step for the head of a Lithuanian yeshiva. His sons went different ways: Rabbi Chaim Berlin was rabbi of Moscow and later of Jerusalem; Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan became one of the leaders of religious Zionism.
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Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- “Aamek davar” — his commentary on the Torah
- “Aamek sheela” — his work on the Sheiltot
Documents of the period
- documents on the closing of the Volozhin yeshiva — the government’s demands and the closure of 5652
Basis: documents and evidence.