Ahron Soloveichik

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Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik;(May 1, 1917 - October 4, 2001) was a scholar of Halakha and a Rosh Yeshiva; known especially within circles of Orthodox Judaism.

It is common to find his name spelled other ways, but his preference was for Ahron rather than Aharon, Aaron, or Aron, and for Soloveichik without the letter t, which many other members of his extended family preferred to include. His choice of this spelling can be seen on the cover of his book, "The Warmth and the Light" [ISBN 0963093622], which was published in his lifetime.

[edit] Biography

Soloveichik was the son of Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik. The late Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was his brother. [1] After immigrating to the United States of America from Poland in 1930, he was tutored by future Rabbis Yitzchak Hutner and Avigdor Miller. Soloveichik was also a strong follower of his grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik. After he graduated from Yeshiva College and received his Semicha (Rabbinic ordination), he went to law school at NYU and graduated with a law degree in 1946. He then spent the next 20 years teaching at yeshivas in New York.

In 1966, he came to Chicago to head the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie. After differing with the administration there on certain key issues, he left this post in 1974 and began his own Yeshiva. He then became the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Brisk in Chicago which claimed to be an American incarnation of the Brisk yeshivas and methods.

Soloveichik taught Torah for 58 years, the last 34 of which were in Chicago. He was known for being a humble, kind man yet one with an iron will. Although the stroke he suffered in 1983 left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair, he continued his duties at Yeshivas Brisk in Chicago and flew to New York every week to deliver a Talmudic lecture at Yeshiva University (a position he accepted after his brother's death).

His wife Ella was a writer and teacher. The couple raised six children all of whom are Rabbis or women married to Rabbis: Moshe and Eliyahu of Chicago, Yosef and Chaim of Israel, Rochel Marcus of Toronto, and Tova Seigal of Newton, Massachusetts. He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

[edit] Works

He wrote the book Logic of the Heart, Logic of the Mind and The Warmth and the Light. One of the ideas he wrote about; is the idea that women are spiritually superior to men. [2] He was opposed to the Vietnam War and the Oslo Accords^{[citation needed]}, but also accepted part of the blame for the 1995 Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin^{[citation needed]} because of the Religious Zionist movement.