Rav Aharon’s talmidim gained a privileged close-up view to the fiery genius who became the architect of America’s postwar Torah world. 

Sixty years after his passing, Rav Aharon Kotler’s talmidim across the globe serve as an informal army dedicated to safeguarding his legacy.

When a talmid speaks of Rav Aharon, his face will inevitably light up, and he’ll gaze off for a moment before returning to his audience to share a fond memory. Rav Aharon’s impact on his talmidim, and by extension, the generations that follow, is clear from just a brief encounter with any one of them.

Rav Yechiel Perr, Rosh Yeshivah of Derech Ayson in Far Rockaway, New York arrived in Lakewood in 1956. Decades later, he still remembers sitting in Rav Aharon’s shiur. “The problem wasn’t understanding the shiur,” he explained. “It was following it through all of its twists and turns.”

The shiur offered a glimpse of the sheer brilliance and breadth of “the Kletzker Rosh Yeshivah,” and many talmidim reviewed it afterward with their more learned friends in order to understand the subtle nuances they had missed as the words of brilliance overflowed from Rav Aharon in a torrent.

In addition to the actual content of the shiur, there was also the presentation: Those present in the room would watch Rav Aharon transform into a fearless warrior, defending his chiddushim while swiftly and surely deflecting any challenges sent his way.

A veteran talmid remembers the pace of the shiur; it was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. Most of the popular shiurim in the yeshivah world slowly develop a lomdishe svara, but Rav Aharon would shoot out questions on the Rishonim across the sugya and resolve them all with a brilliant solution. “Everything about it was lightning fast,” this talmid remembers.

In his battle for truth, Rav Aharon was a fierce general. A talmid once questioned a point Rav Aharon had made. In response, Rav Aharon vehemently defended his approach and rebuked the talmid, calling him “ah shikkere Turk.”

The surrounding talmidim all patted the talmid on the back, telling him, “Ashrecha, how fortunate you are to receive such a rebuke from Rav Aharon.”

(Rav Hillel Zaks, a prime talmid, later explained this colorful term as follows: A drunkard can be readily understood but is not lucid enough to have any awareness of what he is saying. A Turk, in contrast, knows what he is saying, but cannot be comprehended due to the language barrier. A “shikkere Turk” possesses both flaws: He knows not of what he speaks and is completely incomprehensible to his listeners.)

On another occasion, one of the stronger talmidim questioned a particular chiddush of Rav Aharon in the middle of shiur. The ensuing back-and-forth became heated, as the talmidim watched Rav Aharon’s face turn beet red, and he yelled at the talmid for miscomprehending his words. The talmid continued to challenge Rav Aharon, fueling his fire even more, to the point where the talmid needed to be escorted from the beis medrash.

After the shiur, Rav Aharon called the talmid in and calmly told him, “Antshuldigt — excuse me. When I say Torah there’s nothing more important in the world.”

Another talmid recalled that Rav Aharon once gave a shmuess in which he berated the talmidim for not putting seforim back in their place. There were many possible messages that Rav Aharon could have used to drive this point home, the talmid mused. There is derech eretz, there’s a bein adam l’chaveiro element as well. But Rav Aharon chose to focus on the bittul Torah likely to ensue when someone would have to spend extra time searching for a sefer that wasn’t in its proper place. “This is what mattered most to him. The Torah that could have been learned while searching for a Rambam.”

One bochur used to spend his summer bein hazmanim breaks working in a camp being mekarev young teenagers. One year, however, the camp was slated to end a few days into Elul zeman. The talmid was persuaded to stay the few extra days, given that he was involved in crucial outreach work, imbuing these young boys with a taste of Yiddishkeit.

When he returned to yeshivah, Rav Aharon called him in to his office and began to scream at him while holding open a Gemara, pointing to Rashi and Tosafos. “I don’t remember what he was showing me or exactly what he was saying,” the talmid related. “But his message was absolutely clear: He was telling me nothing was more important than Torah.”

Rav Aharon’s grandson, Rav Yaakov Eliezer Schwartzman, related that Rav Aharon was unhappy with the slow pace of study during the early days of Beth Medrash Govoha, and desired that the students cover more ground. For Shabbos, he traveled to Lakewood from his Boro Park home and spent the entire time with the bochurim. When he’d pace through the beis medrash on Shabbos, the students were wary of his disappointment with their slow progress. In order to avoid confrontation, they’d flip several pages further in the Gemara as Rav Aharon approached and pretend to engage in a discussion of the sugya further on in the masechta. After Rav Aharon passed by, they’d turn back to the earlier place in the Gemara and continue with their slow pace.