Bidspirit auction | Letter from Rabbi Yitzchak Ze'ev

Letter from Rabbi Yitzchak Ze'ev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav – Jerusalem, 1944 – On the Writing Procedure of Chidushei Rabbeinu Chaim HaLevi – Printing Unauthorized Novellae ”Absolutely Contravenes the Wishes and Will of My Father and Teacher… I Do Not Assent to This by Any Means!” - Lengthy letter (3 pages, over 60 lines), handwritten and signed by R. Yitzchak Ze'ev Soloveitchik, Rabbi of Brisk (the Brisker Rav). Jerusalem, 29th Sivan 1944. Addressed to his friend R. Yechezkel Abramsky, head rabbi of the London Beit Din, in response to the initiative of R. Yisrael Soloveitchik of South Africa to print the notebook novellae (”tagbuch”) of his uncle R. Chaim HaLevi of Brisk, which he had copied while studying under him. The Brisker Rav acknowledges receipt of his letter on the subject, stating that his response was delayed due to his health condition: ”Your esteemed note reached me at its time. I was surprised and astounded by the manifoldly strange news. I wished to respond immediately, but I fell sick… and I was compelled to lie in bed some days…”. The Brisker Rav explains why some of the novellae of his father, R. Chaim of Brisk, were not printed in his Chidushei Rabbeinu Chaim HaLevi (published 1936): ”The topics that did not find a place in the printed book were not our decision but that of my father himself – not due to negligence and slackness nor by accident, but consciously, intentionally and with profound thought did he exclude them from being printed. Obviously he didn't treat them all indiscriminately, but rather some of them no longer appeared correct to him in his later years… while others he intended to correct and edit, to add or detract or to change the reasoning, but at any rate not as they had been written and arranged previously”. The Brisker Rav goes on to recount: ”I personally witnessed how once he hoped to publish all his written books, and he went over them chapter by chapter, and for every single topic he gave his decision whether or not it should be placed in the book. A list was then drawn up of all the topics he saw fit to arrange and place in a book… there were nearly a hundred topics. From that point on he began to write and arrange based on this list, and those that he found worthy… were immediately copied into the book being prepared for printing; as for the others, he began to arrange them bit by bit in his own way, and over half of the topics were included in the printed book. However, in the meantime the list was lost, and the topics were no longer being written in order but rather in happenstance fashion, and of course there remained more topics that he intended to prepare but never managed to do so. At any rate… the topics that were excluded from the book were determined by my father and master himself, in accordance with his view and method in his later years, and 'who can come after the king' to print a work from those novellae that he himself excluded from printing? – and even in his lifetime, there were not few who requested that he print specifically those novellae that he skipped, but all their words were laughable to him, and they did not penetrate his ears at all. This matter is clearly known to anyone who kept his company in his later years – especially those who worked on writing his novellae, and I don't doubt that my relative R. Yisrael Soloveitchik also knows of this”. The Brisker Rav goes on to discuss the irrelevance of those writings owned by his relative, R. Yisrael Soloveitchik: ”…the writings held by R. Yisrael Soloveitchik are from the year 1898. But it is known to all that in his last twenty years, he worked relentlessly to write and arrange the novellae, and even those very topics have recensions much later than those held by R. Yisrael Soloveitchik. How could one think of printing specifically those older recensions, thwarting all the work done by my father and master over twenty consecutive years, with immense, unmatched effort, to which he devoted himself day and night, and was very particular for readers to see his words specifically in the latest revision as he copied them later – so who has the authority to print in his name specifically the first recensions?... This absolutely contravenes the wishes and will of my father and teacher, which we must consider when printing a work of his that will be set in print for study in the study halls of halachah, which was his true intention when writing and arranging his novellae…”. The Brisker Rav goes on to sharply attack his relative R. Yisrael Soloveitchik's plan to print the work: ”For these reasons, I lodge a complaint against my relative R. Yisrael Soloveitchik… for initiating and also doing the deed of sending you my father's old writings to print as a work of my father, while he himself knows that that was not the view and will of my father and master… And if I have anything to say about this,