Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler is one of the Roshei Yeshiva, or Deans, of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey. He is the son of Rabbi Shneur Kotler who preceded him as rosh yeshiva, the grandson of the yeshiva's founder, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, and the great-grandson of Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer.
He shares the leadership of Beth Medrash Govoha together with Rabbis Yerucham Olshin, Dovid Schustal, and Yisroel Neuman who are all married to other grandchildren of Rabbi Aharon Kotler.
Kotler was first married to a granddaughter of Rabbi Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, and daughter of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Feinstein. After his father died he was called back to head the Yeshiva in Lakewood. His wife, a native Israeli, was not interested in living in America. Kotler wanted to divorce his wife, but she refused to accept the Get (divorce document). To allow himself to marry again he obtained a Heter meah rabbanim (literally permission from a hundred rabbis) that would allow himself to leave his wife in Israel and marry again in the United States. As a result a large controversy developed between the Soloveitchik and Kotler families that has continued for many years.[1][2]
Rabbi Kotler was also involved in another controversy when he first put and later recanted an approbation on the book by one of his former students, Saadya Grama, that argued that Jews constitute a separate genetically superior species. The approbation was withdrawn only after a major anti-Kotler campaign had been started by the Jewish newspaper Forward, Anti-Defamation League and Yeshiva University. In his reconsideration Kotler asserted that the anti-Gentile sentiments contained in the book did not reflect the normative Jewish law. In his earlier endorsement of Grama's book, though, he had explicitly said that the author had written "on the subjects of the Exile, the Election of Israel and her exaltation above and superiority to all of the other nations, all in accordance with the viewpoint of the Torah, based on the solid instruction he has received from his teachers." [3]
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