Aharon (or Ahron, Aaron, Aron) Kotler (1890s - 1962) was a prominent leader of Orthodox Judaism in Lithuania, and later the United States of America.

Rabbi Kotler (on the right)

Early life

Rabbi Kotler studied in the Slabodka yeshiva in Lithuania under the Alter (elder) of Slabodka, Rav Nosson Zvi Finkel, and Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein. After learning there, he joined his father-in-law, Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, to run the yeshiva of Slutzk.

WW II and move to the USA

When the communists took over, the yeshivah moved to Kletzk in Poland. With the outbreak of World War II, Rabbi Kotler and the yeshivah relocated to Vilna, then the major refuge of most yeshivoth from the occupied areas. Rabbi Kotler went to the United States via Siberia, but many of his students did not survive the war. He was brought to America by the Vaad Hatzolah rescue organization and guided it during the Holocaust.

In 1943, Rabbi Kotler founded Bais Medrash Gevoha in Lakewood, New Jersey. Today, this institution is run by four of his grandsons, pre-eminently Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler , and over the year it has grown into the largest institution of its kind in America with over two thousand college level students. He also helped establish Chinuch Atzmai , the independent religious school system in Israel. He was a leader of Agudath Israel of America.

After his sudden death in 1962, he was succeeded by his son Shneur Kotler as rosh yeshiva of the Lakewood yeshiva .

Influence

Rabbi Kotler was the main proponent of a novel approach to Torah study in the USA. In his view, Torah study had suffered badly from the persecutions of World War II and the decline of character of the generations. This led him to encourage young men to devote themselves to full-time Torah study with financial support from the community. After marriage, yeshiva students could move on to a post-graduate kollel program.

Together with Rabbis Moshe Feinstein and Yaakov Kamenetsky , Rabbi Kotler was considered one of primary leaders of USA Orthodoxy in the post-war years.

Kotler, like many Orthodox leaders, was anti-Zionist before World War II. An the summer of 1937, at the third convention of the rabbinical leaders of Agudath Israel held in Mariband, Kotler and the other rabbis there were unanimous in rejecting any proposal for a "Jewish State" on either side of the Jordan River, even if it were established as a religious state.

External links

• Jewish virtual library about Aharon Kotler (1895-1963)
• Kotler's views on Zionism