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.