Rabbi Shimon Shkop רבי שמעון שקאפ
head of the Grodno yeshiva; Sha'arei Yosher, a book on how legal reasoning is built
Born in 1860. He studied at Mir for two years, then six years at Volozhin under the Netziv, and there joined the circle of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik—the man with whom the 'Brisker method' began.
From 1884 he taught for nearly twenty years at Telz; then he was rabbi at Malch and Bransk; from 1920 until his death he headed the Sha'ar ha-Torah yeshiva at Grodno. One year, 1928–29, he spent in New York at RIETS—and came back.
His method is described thus: the sharpness of Rabbi Chaim's analysis together with the Netziv's simplicity and clarity. That is not a blend but the solution to a problem: the Brisker analysis is powerful, but it is easy to tangle a matter with it, and he required that after the analysis things be clearer, not darker.
Sha'arei Yosher appeared in 1925. The book is not about what is ruled but about what a ruling is made of: what possession is, what an obligation is, how a dispute about law differs from a dispute about fact. Best known of all in it is the introduction—on what a man studies for.
In Elul 1939, as the Soviet forces approached Grodno, he told his students to leave for Vilna. Two days later he died—9 Cheshvan 5700.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Sha'arei Yosher, 1925 — an analysis of the foundations of law rather than a code of rulings; the introduction on what one studies for
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Shkop, Simeon Judah" — the dates, Volozhin and Telz, Grodno from 1920, the year in New York
Basis: documents and evidence.