Naphtali Tsevi Judah Berlin

(1817-1893). Lithuanian rabbinical leader and head of the Volozhin yeshivah, popularly known (from the acronym of his Hebrew name) as the Netsiv or "pillar" of Volozhin. Born in Mir, White Russia, he entered the yeshivah at 13 and later married the daughter of its head, R. Isaac of Volozhin. After the latter's death in 1849, his elder son-in-law, R. Eliezer Isaac Fried, became head with Berlin as his assistant. When Fried died in 1853, a controversy arose over the appointment of Berlin and R. Joseph Baer Soloveichik as joint heads, some of the student body maintaining that Soloveichik alone should run the yeshiva. Berlin's strength lay in his thorough knowledge of all rabbinical literature, while Soloveichik's forte was a keen and penetrating method of talmudic analysis. Leading rabbis of the time, R. Isaac Elḥanan Spektor among them, were called upon to adjudicate the dispute and they decided in favor of Berlin. He went on to exert a far-reaching influence over the yeshivah and the number of students rose to 400 under his tutelage. The Babylonian Talmud was worked through in sequence and explained in accordance with the system evolved by Elijah Gaon of Vilna. Berlin shunned Pilpul (casuistic reasoning), for example, and emphasized the basic meaning of each text by referring to parallel sections of the Jerusalem Talmud and the Midrash Halakhah. He also lectured daily, after Morning Service, on the Torah portion of that week. His many published works reflect both his approach and his teachings. They include commentaries on the halakhic Midrashim and his classic explanatory volumes entitled Ha'amek She'elah (1861 ff.) on the She'iltot, a geonic work attributed to AḤAI OF SHABḤA. Berlin also published Scriptural interpretations, notably Ha'amek Davar on the Pentateuch (1879-80), and detailed Responsa on halakhic and philosophical issues, Meshiv Davar (1892).

A vigorous communal leader, Berlin openly declared himself on all the major questions of his time. He was an active supporter of the Ḥibbat Zion ("Lovers of Zion") movement from its very inception and urged observant Jews to swell its ranks and promote Jewish settlement in Erets Israel. Rejecting proposals for the establishment of separatist Orthodox communities (see Samson Raphael Hirsch; Neo-Orthodoxy), he insisted that every attempt be made to win over non-Orthodox and non-religious sectorss of the Jewish people. His last years were clouded by unrelenting czarist interference in the Volozhin yeshivah's educational program. The Russian authorities called for a limit to the number of hours devoted to Torah study and for the introduction of a secular curriculum. Berlin would not agree to these excessive demands and the most prestigious talmudic academy in Eastern Europe was therefore closed by governmental decree on January 22, 1892. Having been expelled from Volozhin, the Netsiv planned to settle in Erets Israel and began attending to his affairs in Warsaw; his death there, some 18 months later, put an end to his dream.

The Netsiv's younger son,

Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan; 1880-1949), became one of the outstanding personalities in religious Zionism and a leader of the Mizrachi movement. He lived for a time in Berlin and then, for a decade (1915-26), in New York, where he organized the American Mizrachi and founded the Teachers' Institute that was to be incorporated in Yeshiva University. From 1926, Meir Berlin was active and prominent in Jerusalem. He founded and edited the Mizrachi newspaper Ha-Tsofeh (1937- ), was an architect of the Talmudic Encyclopedia (1947- ), and also published several works, notably a volume of memoirs in Yiddish (1933; translated into Hebrew as Mi-Volozhin ad Yerushalayim, 1939-40) and a biography of his father (Rabban shel Yisra'el, 1943). Israel's modern Orthodox Bar-Ilan University, established in 1955, honors his memory.

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