Naphtali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv) was a Lithuanian rabbi and one of the greatest scholars of his time. He was born into a family of Jewish scholars, a descendant on his mother's side of Meir Eisenstadt. His first wife was the granddaughter of R. Chaim Volozhin, and his second the daughter of R. Yechiel Michel Epstein. In 1854, he was appointed head of the Volozhin yeshiva, where he introduced a style of Talmud study based on broad knowledge of tannaitic and geonic literature as well as the rishonim. He also emphasized the importance of the study of Torah and the Prophets, giving a daily shiur on the weekly Torah reading. In 1894, the Russian government forced him to close the yeshiva and demanded that secular studies replace Talmud study until 3:00 pm each day. He was the father of R. Chaim Berlin and R. Meir Bar-Ilan (Berlin).
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