Rabbi Aharon Kotler רב אהרן קוטלר
founder of the Lakewood yeshiva
Son-in-law of Rabbi Itzele Petersburger, he headed the yeshiva in Kletsk, fled with it to Vilna, and reached America in 1941. In 1943 he opened Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey.
His premise ran against every habit of the time. American yeshivas trained rabbis and teachers; Kotler declared that one learns not for a post but for the learning itself, and that a grown married man should study for years. That innovation—the kollel as an ordinary stage of life rather than a rarity for a few—changed the shape of American Orthodoxy more than anything else.
He also led the Vaad Hatzala together with Rabbi Eliezer Silver and headed Agudath Israel of America. He died in 1963; the yeshiva then had about two hundred and fifty students, and now has many thousands.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Mishnas Rabbi Aharon, collected discourses and letters — learning for its own sake, not for a post
Basis: documents and evidence.