Tucked away in Memphis Tennessee, where he served as a rav and Av Beis Din of the Vaad HaKehillos of Memphis in addition to founding the Margolin Hebrew Academy, his short jacket and small brimmed hat did much to convince unknowing onlookers that nothing about the man that stood before them defied the ordinary. But some greatness is too large to conceal and ultimately, the world would learn that the plain and simple clothing was essentially a uniform, the dress code for a man whose humility was just as great as his piety and immense scholarship.
If an aspiration for greatness came naturally to Rav Nota, it was because he was exposed to it from a very young age. His father, Rav Yitzchok Greenblatt, lived in Brisk where he was close with Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. The Greenblatts traveled to America for the purpose of raising money for Yeshivas Toras Chesed of Brisk and ultimately settled in Washington DC. It was there that Rav Nota was born in 1925 (he was the ben zekunim; all his siblings were born in Brisk).
Rav Greenblatt served as rav of the Volliner shul in Washington until 1928, when he took a position in Ellenville, New York. In 1931, when Nota was six, his father decided to give up his rabbanus and move to Eretz Yisrael where he would sit and learn. Little Nota, for his part, studied under Rav Chaikel Mulevsky, the famed “Russisher Melamed.” At the age of 13 he traveled alone back to America where he joined Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim under Rav Dovid Leibowitz. Three years later, he traveled to Boston with Rav Michel Feinstein, to Heichal Rabbeinu Chaim Halevi, a yeshivah led by Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik, where Rav Michel would deliver shiurim to a group of European students.
A year later, Nota, together with Rav Michel, went back to New York to Mesivta Tiferes Yeushalayim, to learn under Rav Michel’s uncle Rav Moshe Feinstein. This would be a defining moment, one that would characterize Rav Nota’s life. Because Rav Moshe became his rebbi, his mentor, his greatest inspiration. From Rav Moshe he learned how to pasken, and the thousands of piskei halachah Rav Nota issued over the following decades were molded there, in the beis medrash of MTJ. After learning under Rav Moshe for several years, he again returned to Eretz Yisrael on the first ship that permitted civilians, and between the years 1946 and 1948, developed a close relationship with gedolim such as the Brisker Rav, Rav Issser Zalman Meltzer, the Chazon Ish, and others.
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