Editing Chaim Soloveitchik (section)

== His Method ==

==== His Learning Method ====
Rabbi Chaim innovated a learning method known as the "Brisk method." This method has become very widespread in the yeshiva world.<blockquote>This method was defined in its time by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, who aptly described Rabbi Chaim's uniqueness, calling it "primaryness":

"And there is 'primaryness' also because of completeness. The tears and halves, the scattering and separation, come in distance of place and distance of time from the source and the root. At the root point there is no 'cutting of the plantings.' And this primary completeness exists in Rabbi Chaim's teachings. Not completeness in area and scope, but that which penetrates into the very essence of a matter and grasps its nature and substance. Its entire nature and entire substance. As long as we have not obtained the matter in its deepest treasures, it is not in our possession in all its completeness. It is possible, for example, that a person knows 'the entire Torah' and yet about even one thing from the Torah we cannot say that 'his learning is in his hand.' It is possible that a person understands an entire sugya with all its commentaries, Rishonim and Acharonim, and yet does not feel the essence of the point. It is possible that a person may engage in pilpul in a known sugya with both sharpness and breadth of knowledge, and not necessarily with empty pilpul, but with matters of substance, and nevertheless he circles around the point without reaching it. Then completeness is deficient in two senses: in what is lacking and what is excessive. The 'depths' are lacking, the inner essence of the matter, and excessive are all those explanations and innovations that have attached themselves to the topic from the outside, and are not really relevant. Completeness both connects and separates simultaneously. It connects all parts of the matter, and separates the foreign branches that have become mixed in."</blockquote>

==== Regarding Opposition to Chassidus ====
Rabbi Chaim was a grandson of the Gaon Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who was the only student of the Vilna Gaon who did not participate in the gatherings organized by the Misnagdim against the camp of the friends of Hashem of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples, and did not take part in any of the steps they plotted against them. When Rabbi Chaim of Brisk was later asked about his association with Chassidim despite the war against them by the Vilna Gaon and his disciples, he said: During the dispute with the Chassidim, there were two camps among the Misnagdim; those who sought the truth and eventually found it, and on the other hand, those who sought to stir up strife. From the descendants of the latter, one must keep distance as from fire.

Rabbi Chaim of Brisk passed away in the year 5678 (1918), and was buried next to his wife's grandfather, the Netziv of Volozhin.