Yitzchak Hutner

Yitzchok Hutner
Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner the Rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin at a Purim celebration in his yeshiva
Personal details
Born	1906 Warsaw, Poland
Died	November 28, 1980(1980-11-28) (aged 74) Jerusalem, Israel

R. Yitzchok (Isaac) Hutner (Hebrew: יצחק הוטנר‎‎; 1906–1980) was an American Orthodox rabbi and rosh yeshiva.

Yitzchok Hutner was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a family with both Ger Hasidic and non-Hasidic Lithuanian Jewish roots. As a child he received private instruction in Torah and Talmud. As a teenager he was enrolled in the Slabodka yeshiva in Lithuania, headed by Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, where he was known as the "Warsaw Illui" ("prodigy").

Having obtained a solid grounding in Talmud, Hutner joined a group of the Slabodka yeshiva that established a new yeshiva in Hebron in British Mandate of Palestine. He studied there until 1929, narrowly escaping the 1929 Hebron massacre because he was away for the weekend. During his stay in Palestine, Hutner became a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine. Both men had a philosophical and mystical mind-set that made them kindred spirits. Like Kook, the young Hutner eventually developed a warm attitude toward non-religious Jews who were seeking to become more religious. Their world view was in the context of the end of the Jewish exile, golus (galut), anticipation of the imminent coming of the messianic era.