Rav Aharon Kotler was the Rosh Yeshiva of Bais Medrash Govoha, Lakewood. The son of Rav Shneur Zalman Pinnes, Rav Aharon was known as the “Shislovitzer Iluy”. At fourteen, he entered the Slobodka Yeshiva, where he learned under the Alter and Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein. He also heard shiurim from Rav Boruch Ber, who had his own Yeshiva in one of the suburbs of Slobodka. He married the daughter of Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, head of the Yeshiva Etz Chaim in Slutsk, and became his assistant in 1914. Even before he was twenty-five years old, he became one of its Roshei Yeshiva. After the Yeshiva’s forced transfer in 1921 to Kletsk, Poland, due to the Bolshevik takeover and religious persecution, Rav Isser Zalman immigrated to Eretz Yisrael, and Rav Kotler directed the Etz Chaim for twenty years.
