With Fire in His Eyes: The Burning Mission of Rav Aharon Kotler

Rav Aharon Kotler inspired a Torah revolution on three continents— but that’s just part of the story

With Fire in His Eyes: The Burning Mission of Rav Aharon Kotler
Photos: BMG Archives, Agudah Archives, DMS Yeshiva Archives, Wolfson Family, Hoberman Family, Kamenetsky Family, National Library of Israel, US Dept of State, Prof. Chaim I. Waxman, YIVO, Torah Umesorah Archives, Chinuch Atzmai Archives, Perr Family, Golding Family, Bunim Family, TAJ Art and Judaica, Feivel Schneider
Boro Park, Brooklyn, late 1950s

A child is playing outside a shul. He is approached by a Mirrer talmid who spent the war years in Shanghai. The man asks him incredulously, “How can you play outside when Rav Aharon Kotler is delivering a shiur? How can you lose your chance to hear him speak?”

The boy obligingly goes inside and listens, not understanding a single word.

Decades later, he still recalled the scene: “I saw an older man speaking with a passion I had never seen before or since. His face was beet-red with excitement and exertion. His flaming blue eyes bore into the souls of all present. The energy he exuded, the pathos of his speech, and the glow of his face made it a surreal experience. Despite not having understood, that image is engraved in my mind for eternity.”

Such was an encounter with Rav Aharon Kotler.

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