This Shabbos marks eighty years since the petirah of Rav Moshe Soloveitchik
Moshe Soloveitchik, grandson of the Netziv of Volozhin, was celebrating his bar mitzvah, and his great-grandfather rose to speak. He cited a tradition from the family patriarch Rav Chaim Volozhiner that the Torah’s final station prior to Mashiach’s arrival would be in far off America. The Netziv related that when Rav Chaim said that, he burst into tears. “Who knows the extent of the yissurim and mesiras nefesh required of courageous individuals in order to establish Torah there,” he cried.
Tragically, many of the first roshei yeshivah in the early history of the American Torah world passed away prematurely in the prime of their lives. America’s first rosh yeshivah, the Meitscheter Illui, passed away at the age of fifty in 1928, followed by Rav Dovid Leibowitz in 1941 at the age fifty- four, and Rav Shlomo Heiman, aged fifty-seven, in 1944.
This Shabbos marks eighty years since the petirah of Rav Moshe Soloveitchik.
Rav Moshe, the son of Rav Chaim Brisker, served as rosh yeshivah of RIETS from 1929 until his death at the age of 61 in January 1941. It’s almost as if Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s prophecy was tragically carried out by these great Torah leaders who gave their lives to teach Torah on these shores.
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