רבי חיים מוולוז׳ין

Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin is the man who built the yeshiva of the last generations. The foremost disciple of the Vilna Gaon, he understood that the Lithuanian Torah world needed an institution to concentrate study and raise scholars, and founded the Volozhin yeshiva, 'the mother of yeshivas,' from which grew all the Lithuanian yeshivas we know.

In his book 'Nefesh HaChaim' he gave a deep doctrine to the work of study: he taught that a person's deeds, foremost the study of Torah, shake the upper worlds, and that the human being is the 'soul of life' of Creation. He built a balance against Chassidut: not nullifying the inner service, but establishing the study of Torah as the central pillar.

Rabbi Chaim also taught the greatness of mutual responsibility. The yeshiva he built was not only a place of study but a home in which the next generation was built. He understood that for the Torah to survive the storms of the time, it needed a stable institution, not only great individuals, and in this ensured the continuity of the Torah world.

What do we learn from him? That a stable institution can hold up Torah more firmly than any individual, and that the study of Torah carries within it a cosmic responsibility. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin teaches that building a home for the Torah is a deed of generations, and that one who founds a yeshiva gives the people not only knowledge but a living framework that will hold them long after he is gone.