Torath ha-Nazir [novellae on Maimonides' Hilchoth Neziruth]

HUTNER, ISAAC

S. Joselevitz

Kovna

1932

FIRST EDITION

Yitzchok Hutner (1906-1980), Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, studied in his youth at the Slabodka Yeshiva in Lithuania, headed by Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, where he was known as the "Warsaw Illui." He was sent to join an extension of the Slabodka yeshiva in Chevron and during the course of his stay in Eretz Israel became closely associated with R. Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine. In later years, when R. Kook's name became associated with the Mizrachi movement, R. Hutner, a member of the non-Zionist Agudath Israel of America's Mo'etzes Gedolei ha-Torah, sought to revise his former association with R. Kook. The present work, Torath ha-Nazir is an example of this. When R. Hutner first published it in Kovna, he included approbations from both R. Chaim Ozer Grodzenski and R. Kook. However when it was republished in the early 1970s, no approbation from R. Kook was included. Allegedly, a key financial backer of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin sought to obtain any copy of the present first edition containing R. Kook's approbation, in order to supress public awareness of Rabbi Hutner's former ties to Rabbi Kook