A Life Steady and Whole

Recollections and Appreciations of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein Zt"l. We commemorate his mastery of Torah and his capacity to draw judiciously and elegantly on the Western intellectual tradition to enhance authentic and critical religious thinking. We dwell on his ethical greatness and the magnificence of his piety, how he prayed, how he listened to other human beings, how he attended to his father, how he never wasted a moment. We continue to be driven by the irrefutable charisma of the life rightly lived, the life lived in harness. In his absence, as in his lifetime, we continue to ask ourselves what he would think about the way we contend with our everyday challenges and what he would say about our struggle against torpor and faithlessness. - From a eulogy by R. Shalom Carmy

Rabbi Lichtenstein (1933 - 2015), born in France and educated in the United States, was Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, Israel from 1971 until his death. Rabbi Lichtenstein's early Torah education was at Yeshivat Chaim Berlin, where he studied with Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, and Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik. He received his advanced training and ordination at Yeshivat Rabbi Yitzchok Elchanan (Yeshiva University) from his primary mentor, the renowned Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. In addition to his yeshiva studies, Rabbi Lichtenstein completed a Ph.D. in English Literature at Harvard University. He taught Talmud and was the first head of the Kollel at Yeshiva University. At Yeshivat Har Etzion, he taught Talmud and Jewish Thought and mentored generations of students from Israel and abroad. Rabbi Lichtenstein has written on a wide range of Torah topics - Gemara, Halacha, Mahshava, and Tanakh. He was awarded the Rabbi Kook Prize for Original Torah Literature in 2012 and Israel Prize for Torah Literature in 2014