Framed compendium (33 1/4 x 19 1/2 in.; 645 x 498 mm), comprising a Hebrew broadside (9 x 14 in.; 230 x 355 mm), lightly soiled, stained and creased; and a photograph (9 x 7 1/2 in.; 230 x 190 mm). Matted within dual windows. Glazed and framed.
In the summer of 1935, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik visited the Land of Israel for the first and only time, as a candidate for the position of Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. During his visit to the Holy Land, Soloveitchik delivered a
shiur (halakhic discourse) at the Merkaz ha-Rav Yeshiva, which had been founded by the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Rav Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook. Rav Kook, who had, as a young yeshiva student, attended
shiurim of Reb Hayyim Brisker (Rabbi Soloveitchik’s grandfather) at the famed Volozhin yeshiva, asserted “that the power of genius of the grandfather now resides with the grandson.” Others who heard Soloveitchik's lecture were equally enthusiastic, but although the young Soloveitchik was clearly recognized as an important future leader of Orthodox Jewry, he nevertheless placed third in the official balloting, finishing behind Rabbis Moshe Amiel and Isaac Herzog.
Soloveitchik (1903-1993) returned to the United States where he did indeed don the mantle of Jewish community leadership, first in Boston, where he pioneered the Maimonides School, one of the first Hebrew day schools in Boston in 1937. When the school's high school was founded in the late 1940s, he instituted a number of innovations in the curriculum, including teaching co-ed Talmud classes. By the time Soloveitchik succeeded his father, Moses (Moshe) Soloveichik, as the head of the rabbinical school at New York’s Yeshiva University (YU) in 1941, he was nearly universally referred to simply as “The Rav.” Rabbi Soloveitchik taught at YU until 1986 and ordained over 2,000 rabbis, many of whom are among the leaders of Orthodox Judaism and the Jewish people today.
