obituaries

Obituaries from page 85

HELENE
SCHOENFELD
WESTERMAN, 96, of

Lehigh Acres, Fla., for-
merly of West Bloomfield,
died April 17, 2015.
She is survived by
her son and daughter-
in-law, Michael Joseph
and Pattie Westerman;
grandchildren, Deborah
and Eric Schiffer, Rochelle Westerman,
David Westerman, Amanda Westerman
Christopher and Matt Christopher, and
Joshua Westerman; great-grandchildren,
Sarah, Emily, Zoe and Jillian; sister and
brother-in-law, Rose and Art Ross; brothers
and sister-in-law, Bill and Rosalie Schoenfeld,
and Arnie Schoenfeld; Dolores Westerman
and other loving relatives and friends.
Mrs. Westerman was the beloved wife
of the late A. Marvin Westerman; cher-
ished mother of the late Stephen Lawrence
Westerman; the dear sister-in-law of the
late Connie Schoenfeld.
Contributions may be made to Temple
Israel, Library Fund, 5725 Walnut Lake
Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48323, www.
temple-israel.org . Local arrangements by
Ira Kaufman Chapel.

Renowned Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein

Times of Israel

R

abbi Aharon Lichtenstein,
among the most prominent rab-
bis in Modern Orthodoxy and
the Israeli national-religious movement,
died on April 20, 2015, at age 81.
Rabbi Lichtenstein was a noted and
prolific Jewish legal authority, head of the
Har Etzion Yeshiva, a
key religious seminary
in the Israeli religious-
Zionist world, and the
son-in-law of famed
American Modern
Orthodox spiritual
leader Rabbi Joseph
Soloveitchik.
Rabbi Aharon
He was ordained
Lichtenstein
by the Boston-based
Rabbi Soloveitchik
in 1959 and held a Ph.D. in English
literature from Harvard University con-
ducted under the tutelage of literary critic
Douglas Bush. Rabbi Lichtenstein was
awarded Israel's highest civilian honor,

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86 April 30 • 2015

Obituaries

the Israel Prize, in 2014.
Rabbi Lichtenstein was born in Paris
in 1933, the year the Nazi party rose to
power in neighboring Germany, but fled
Vichy France with his family in 1941
for the United States. The family settled
in New York in 1945, where he studied
in religious seminaries and eventually
entered Yeshiva University.
He was invited to jointly head, with
Rabbi Yehuda Amital, the Har Etzion
Yeshiva, located in the Etzion Bloc in the
West Bank south of Jerusalem, in 1971,
and lived in Israel ever since.
A 2014 profile in the online magazine
Mosaic characterized his approach to
religious study thus: "As a Talmudist,
Rabbi Lichtenstein is a proponent of the
`Brisker' method, for which his wife's
family is renowned. In this pedagogical
approach, legal disputes or contradictions
within the Talmud may be understood
by analyzing the logical or 'conceptual'
underpinnings that account for the diver-
gent rabbinic rulings under examination.
In Rabbi Lichtenstein's hands, the method

has been further abstracted so that it can
be employed at the very outset of any
exercise in Talmudic analysis:'
According to the profile's author Elli
Fischer, who studied at the Har Etzion
Yeshiva, "the canonical stories about him
do not recount his genius or erudition
but his humility: answering the yeshivah's
public phone with a simple Aharon speak-
ing: or, after students in an army class-
room have all fallen asleep, continuing an
involved Talmudic lecture so as to allow
them to get some much-needed rest."
A humanist who incorporated his
study of non-Jewish thinkers with his
more traditional and stringent study of
Talmud, Rabbi Lichtenstein was famously
clean-shaven, a rarity in the highest levels
of the Orthodox rabbinic world.
He is survived by his wife, Dr. Tovah
Lichtenstein, and six children.
The funeral was held April 21 at the
Har Etzion Yeshiva in the Gush Etzion
bloc, according to Israel Radio. Rabbi
Lichtenstein was laid to rest in Jerusalem's
Givat Shaul cemetery.

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