| Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin |
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| 1817 births | |
| 1893 deaths | |
| belarusian rabbis | |
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BIOGRAPHY Rabbi Berlin was born into a family of Jewish scholars renowned for its scholarship. His father Jacob, while not a rabbi, was a Talmudic scholar; his mother was directly descended from Chaim Volozhin , the student of the Vilna Gaon who founded the Volozhin yeshiva. Although initially a weak student, legend has it that Rabbi Berlin applied himself to his studies after overhearing his parents debating whether he should pursue a trade. His first wife was the daughter of Rabbi Yitzchok of Volozhin, the son of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin . His second wife was his niece, a daughter of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein , the author of the ''Aruch haShulchan''. A son from his first marriage, Rabbi Chaim Berlin , became the rabbi of Moscow , a daughter married Rabbi Refael Shapiro , and his son from his second marriage was Rabbi Meir Berlin (later Bar-Ilan). Rabbi Berlin led the ''yeshiva'' in Volozhin, then the largest and most influential in Lithuania , from 1854 to its closure in 1892 . Despite the destruction (twice) of the town and the ''yeshiva'' building in large fires, its enrollment increased steadily under his leadership, and the ''yeshiva'' would produce a number of prominent rabbinic figures who led Lithuanian and Eastern-European Jewry until World War II . Amongst them was Rabbi Shimon Shkop . In Volozhin, his leadership was contested by the popular Rabbi Joseph Dov (Yoshe Ber) Soloveitchik, whose style of Torah Study differed substationally from Rabbi Berlin's. Rabbi J.D. Soloveitchik ultimately became rabbi of Slutzk, Warsaw and Brisk, where he founded the rabbinical dynasty that still carries his name. In 1892 , the Russia n authorities (influenced by '' Haskalah '' elements) sought to introduce an extensive program of secular studies into the ''yeshiva''. As this would seriously undermine the aims of the institution, Rabbi Berlin saw no other solution than to let the government close the ''yeshiva''. (This is the generally accepted understanding of events, but it remains contraversial; for other scholars' accounts as to what may have caused the closing, see the Closing Of The Volozhin Yeshiva .) After the closure, he traveled to Vilna and other cities, trying to clear the ''yeshiva's'' debt. The last few months of Rabbi Berlin's life, he suffered from Diabetes and the consequences of a Stroke . While he intended to travel to the Land Of Israel , his medical condition made this impossible. He spent his last weeks in Warsaw , and is interred in a cemetery there. VIEWS AND INFLUENCE Rabbi Berlin had a traditionalist approach to Torah Study that was at odds with the highly analytical style of ''lomdus'' ("learned intellectual analysis") that was pioneered by Soloveitchik. Politically, he favored Jewish settlement of the Eretz Yisrael , then under the control of the Ottoman Empire ; he was initially a member of the Chovevei Tzion movement (founded by his contemporary Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher ), but later distanced himself from them. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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