Naphtali Tsvi Yehudah Berlin, the

Born in Mir, Russian Empire (today in Belarus), to a family of rabbinic scholars, Naphtali Tsvi Yehudah, known by the acronym the Netsiv (also Netziv, Natziv), had a traditional education. At age fourteen, while studying at the Volozhin yeshiva, he married Reyna Batya, a granddaughter of Ḥayim of Volozhin (1749–1821), the founder and first head of the yeshiva. Rising through the ranks of the institution—accelerated by his commentary on Aḥai of Shabḥa’s eighth-century She’iltot—the Netsiv was appointed head of the yeshiva with Yosef Dov Ber Soloveichik as his deputy in 1853. He believed that reading all relevant texts and passages, including those from Geonim and early Rishonim, was the truly proper way of studying and understanding any text. After his first wife died in 1871, the Netsiv married his niece, Batya Miriam, the daughter of his sister and R. Yeḥiel Mikhl Epstein. Although the Netsiv read Haskalah literature and occasionally quoted from it in his writings, he forbade its presence at the Volozhin yeshiva. He was an early member of the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement, but he distanced himself from nationalistic activity in later years. In addition to his many commentaries on the Torah, Talmud, and rabbinic texts, he was widely respected for his many halakhic responsa. Following an impasse with Russian Imperial authorities over curriculum that led to the closing of the Volozhin yeshiva in 1892, the Netsiv’s health rapidly declined and he died in Warsaw.