Aryeh Malkiel Kotler (born April 1951) is a Haredi Judaism (ultra-Orthodox) rabbi and rosh yeshiva (dean) of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey, one of the largest in the world.
Biography
Aryeh Malkiel Kotler was born to
Shneur Kotler and his wife, Rischel (née Friedman). He is the second of 9 children.
The elder Kotler was the
rosh yeshiva (dean) of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey and son of the yeshiva's founder,
Aharon Kotler. On his father's side, Kotler is the great-grandson of Isser Zalman Meltzer.
Upon the death of his father in 1982, Kotler was named co-rosh yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha along with Dovid Schustal, Yeruchem Olshin, and Yisroel Neuman,[Goldberg, Rabbi Hillel. "The Traffic is Edgy, Rav Olshin Is Not". Yated Ne'eman, 12 October 2011, pp. 70–71.]
Kotler is a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (Council of Torah Sages) of Agudath Israel of America.
Family
Kotler's first wife Hinda was the daughter of Yechiel Michel Feinstein and Lifsha, the daughter of Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik. When Kotler succeeded his father, who died while Kotler was in the US visiting him, as rosh yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha, Hinda Kotler refused to join her husband in Lakewood or accept a (Jewish divorce document) without a rabbinical court in Israel hearing the case; she refused to submit to an American rabbinical court.
Kotler was issued a rarely used exemption known as a (permission of 100 rabbis) which allowed him to take a second wife upon depositing the divorce document for the first wife with the rabbinical court.
This created a rift within the non-hassidic Hareidi world, with some claiming that the
heter meah rabbanim was invalid.
[See Emet Kene, a booklet put out by those opposing the validity of the heter meah rabbanim.] Several months later he married his second wife, Chana Leah Tikotzky.
