An Ideology for American Yeshiva Students: The Sermons of R. Aharon Kotler, 1942-1962

Abstract

In the years following World War II, Rabbi Aharon Kotler emerged as one of the most influential leaders in American Haredi Orthodoxy. Founder of BethMedrash Govoha, a yeshiva located in Lakewood, New Jersey, Kotler viewed full time Torah study as a central, indeed the central value, for Jewish men. This article is an attempt to identify the ways in which Kotler’s lectures were moving beyond the ideas of his Eastern European predecessors, and were articulating an ideology and theology that would motivate young Americans to abandon the upward mobility of American culture, and replace it with the poverty of a yeshiva life. This ideology is part of the reason that Beth Medrash Govoha, and the Haredi Judaism it pioneered, became so central in American Orthodoxy in the second half of the 20th century.

Holocaust, Hurban, and Haredization: Pilgrimages to Eastern Europe and the Realignment of American Orthodoxy

“…The haredim, in opposition, were guided by an isolationist approach that entailed a far more selective attitude regarding who could claim membership in their collectives. As such, their educational institutions and clergy focused their ''sectarian'' efforts almost exclusively on their own narrow ''natural'' constituency (Liebman 1965, 67-89;Heilman 2006, 4-5, 47-62;Finkelman 2007).…”

The Kollel Movement in the State of Israel: A Pedagogic and Ideological Typology

“…In the United States, the kollel emerged for a tiny number of students in the 1950s, largely based on the efforts of Rabbi Aharon Kotler (1891Kotler ( -1962, founder of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey (Finkelman 2002(Finkelman , 2007. Kotler (2006) argued that the destruction of the Torah centers in Europe made it necessary both to protect students from what he considered the destructive cultural atmosphere of the United States and to enable the development of Torah scholars of the quality that he claimed existed in Europe.…”