Rav Yisrael Zev Gustman רב ישראל זאב גוסטמן
a judge in Vilna under Rav Chaim Ozer; head of the Netzach Yisrael yeshiva in Jerusalem
Born in Bialystok, he learned in Grodno under Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and at twenty Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski took him onto the Vilna rabbinical court—a thing unheard of. He also set him at the head of the Ramailes yeshiva. The youth whom the old dayanim of Vilna heard as an equal was remembered all their lives.
He survived the war in the forests near Vilna, with his wife and daughter; his small son Meir was killed before his eyes. He went into the forests at thirty-three and lost his son there. After the war came forty years of teaching: New York, the Netzach Yisrael yeshiva in Brooklyn, and in 1971 he moved it to Jerusalem, to Rechavia. His lessons there became known far beyond the yeshiva world: the mathematician Yisrael Aumann, a future Nobel laureate, came to them year after year.
He taught as they taught in Grodno: broadly, with a full treatment of every opinion, unhurried. The lessons appeared as Kuntresei Shiurim. He died in Sivan 1991 in Jerusalem.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Kuntresei Shiurim by Rav Yisrael Zev Gustman — his Talmud lessons
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, Grodno and Vilna, the court under Rav Chaim Ozer, Brooklyn, Jerusalem from 1971
Basis: documents and evidence.