Yitzchok Hutner: Encyclopedia II - Yitzchok Hutner - Methodology

Yitzchok Hutner - Methodology

His methodology and style was controversial, although intellectually he placed great emphasis on penetrating Talmudic study and analysis, emotionally he veered towards the hasidic-style, more than his Lithuanian-style colleagues reared as mitnagdim could tolerate. Ironically, Rabbi Hutner became a fierce critic of Lubavitch and the idolization of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson. Yet both men referred to their discourses as maamarim. He also forbade his students from attending any lectures given by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik at the same time that he appointed Rabbi Soloveitchik's younger brother, whom he had tutored in Warsaw, Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik (later to head his own yeshiva in Skokie near Chicago, Illinois) as head of his own Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik completed a Doctorate in law at New York University at the same time that he lectured in Rabbi Hutner's Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin.

In the 1950s, he established a school for post-graduate married scholars to continue their in-depth Talmudical studies. This was a kolel, (a post graduate division), the Kollel Gur Aryeh, one of the first of its kind in America. Many of his students became prominent educational, outreach, and pulpit rabbis. He stayed in touch with them and was intimately involved in major communal policy decision-making as he worked through his network of students in positions of leadership, and won over to his cause people who came to meet with him.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Methodology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki