Shneur Kotler

Rabbi Shneur Kotler (1918 - 1982) was the son of the famed Talmudic scholar Rabbi Aharon Kotler. Upon the death of his father in 1962, he became the rosh yeshiva of Beis Medrash Govoha, a Lithuanian-style Talmudic Haredi but non-Hasidic yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Born in Slutsk, Russia, where his maternal grandfather Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer was the rosh yeshiva and rabbi, Rabbi Kotler escaped to Mandatory Palestine in 1940. There, he studied under the leading scholars of Jerusalem, among them Rabbi Meltzer who had moved there previously.

In 1947, after World War II, he moved to Lakewood to join his father, who had brought his yeshiva there from Europe. Rabbi Shneur Kotler assumed the leadership of the yeshiva with his father's death in 1962. He transformed Lakewood from a middling institution into a flagship center of excellence and fulcrum of the Orthodox yeshiva world.

Whereas his father had actively restricted enrollment to a select group of students, Rabbi Shneur Kotler opened the yeshiva doors to a broader range of students and post-graduate fellows. From a group of approximately 200 students, the yeshiva grew to almost a thousand students by 1981. As more students enrolled, the scope of study broadened to the point where a student could join any number of groups studying all the tractates of the Talmud.

Rabbi Kotler sent out groups of married students, pioneers to establish kollels in major communities across America, from Philadelphia in the East to Los Angeles in the West. The members of these kollels would divide their time between studying Talmud and spreading the experience of Torah learning to the local Jewish populations. There are now Lakewood satellite kollels operating in 30 cities across North America.

Rabbi Kotler was active in communal organizations and issues. He held leadership positions as a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudath Israel of America and was on the rabbinical boards of the Torah Umesorah National Society for Hebrew Day Schools and Chinuch Atzmai. Rabbi Kotler was also very active in helping Jewish refugees from Russia and Iran.

Death

Rabbi Kotler died in 1982 in Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston. He was 64 years old. Tens of thousands of mourners assembled at Rabbi Kotler's funeral in Jerusalem; even vaster throngs had attended in America before his final journey.

He was survived by his wife, Rischel; a sister, Sarah Schwartzman of New York; eight children, and many grandchildren. With his untimely death, his son Rabbi Malkiel Kotler took over the leadership of the yeshiva, assisted by three other grandchildren of Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbis Dovid Schustal, Yerucham Olshin and Yisroel Neuman.

References

* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E2D7153BF934A15755C0A964948260 New York Times Obituary 1982]
* [http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/Vol_84__1984.pdf American Jewish Yearbook 1984 obituary]
* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=609176 Haaretz article on the Lakewood yeshiva]