ר׳ יצחק זאב הלוי סולובייצ׳יק

ר׳ יצחק זאב הלוי סולובייצ׳יק (19 October 1886–11 October 1959), known as the Griz or Brisker Rav, was the last rabbi of prewar Brisk and a central transmitter of the Brisker analytical method. He was born in Volozhin while his father ר׳ חיים הלוי סולובייצ׳יק taught there; his mother Lifsha was a daughter of ר׳ רפאל שפירא. After the family moved to Brisk, his father became his principal teacher. He married Alte Hendel Auerbach and succeeded ר׳ חיים as rabbi of Brisk after the latter's death in 1918. His learning emphasized exact textual formulation, conceptual distinctions within halakhic categories and especially close analysis of Rambam's משנה תורה. He also supervised the difficult publication of his father's חידושי רבנו חיים הלוי in 1936. The German invasion of Poland found him away from Brisk at Krynica. He reached Warsaw and then Vilna, escaping to Mandatory Palestine with several children in 1941; his wife and children who remained behind were murdered in the Holocaust. In Jerusalem he declined formal state or chief-rabbinic office and taught a small selected circle in his home, from which the later Jerusalem Brisk yeshivot developed under his sons. He became an influential leader of anti-Zionist Lithuanian Haredi society, opposing participation in state institutions and policies he believed threatened religious autonomy. His own writings were published principally after his death as חידושי מרן רי״ז הלוי on Rambam, Torah and Talmudic tractates; student notebooks form a related but textually distinct literature. He died in Jerusalem in 1959 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.