Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (Hebrew: יוסף דב הלוי סולובייצ׳יק Yosef Dov ha-Levi Soloveychik; February 27, 1903 – April 9, 1993) was a major American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, and modern Jewish philosopher. He was a scion of the Lithuanian Jewish Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty.

As a rosh yeshiva of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) at Yeshiva University in New York City, The Rav, as he was known, ordained close to 2,000 rabbis over the course of almost half a century. Some Rabbinic literature, such as sefer Shiurei Ha-Grid, refers to him as Ha-Grid (הגרי״ד), an acronym for "The Gaon Rabbi Yosef Dov".

He is regarded as a seminal figure by Modern Orthodox Judaism and served as a guide and role-model for tens of thousands of Jews, both as a Talmudic scholar and as a religious leader.

Heritage

Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was born on February 27, 1903, in Pruzhany, Imperial Russia (later Poland, now Belarus). He came from a rabbinical dynasty dating back some 200 years: His paternal grandfather was Chaim Soloveitchik, and his great-grandfather and namesake was Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the Beis HaLevi. His great-great-grandfather was Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (The Netziv), and his great-great-great-great grandfather was Chaim Volozhin. His father, Moshe Soloveichik (note different spelling of last name), preceded him as head of the RIETS rabbinical school at Yeshiva University.

On his maternal line, Soloveitchik was a grandson of Eliyahu Feinstein and his wife Guta Feinstein, née Davidovitch, who, in turn, was a descendant of a long line of Kapulyan rabbis, and of the Tosafot Yom Tov, the Shelah, the Maharshal, and Rashi.