Rav Mendel Gettinger, zt”l, was a mammoth talmid chacham, in the image of those trained in the glorious days of the greatest Lithuanian yeshivos – yet he was born (in 1925), raised, and educated in Brooklyn. He was a rav of a very American-style shul in Manhattan, did post-graduate work in mathematics and engineering at Columbia University, and researched the heavens with his own telescope. His father was a Stuchiner chasid, but if Rav Gettinger had any chasidic influence in his life, I am unaware of it. Although few of his contemporaries in Brownsville received any serious Torah education, Rav Gettinger was sent to yeshivos.

He became a talmid of Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt”l, at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, through whose influence he dedicated his life completely to Torah. Rav Gettinger completed Shas the first time at the age of 17! Not bad for an American boy of his generation. Rav Gettinger received much of his shimush (apprenticeship) in psak halacha from Harav Eliyahu Henkin, the preeminent posek of America in his era.

Rav BenZion Chayim Shloime Twerski, zt”l, was the oldest of five very esteemed brothers: the late well-known prolific Torah author and psychiatrist Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski; Rabbi Motel Twerski of Flatbush and, yibadlu lechayim, the Milwaukee Hornosteipel Rebbe Rav Michel Twerski, shlit”a; and law professor Rabbi Aharon Twerski, shlit”a.

I first met Rav Shloime in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when I spent the summer there on a SEED program. He was there for a Shabbos in honor of the yahrzeit of his father, a rebbe who had served for many, many decades as rav of a shul in Milwaukee.? My kesher with Rav Shloime deepened a few years later, when I was in kollel in Baltimore and his son-in-law, Rabbi Yitzchok (Itchie) Lowenbraun, and his wife Miriam (zichronam livracha) regularly ran kiruv Shabbatons. Rabbi Lowenbraun asked if my wife and I would like to join them on a Shabbaton. We did, and after that we began seeing Rav Shloime regularly, as he came in several times a year for these Shabbatons.

My relationship with Rav Yosef Ber Soloveichik of Boston was somewhat different from that of his talmidim. He had two main groups of talmidim; those who saw themselves as part of the Modern Orthodox world and who had studied under him at Yeshiva University, and those from the yeshiva world at large who, predominantly but not exclusively, studied under him during the summer months in Boston. Many of the latter had also attended his shiurim at YU somewhat clandestinely.

Rav Nota Greenblatt, one of Rav Moshe Feinstein’s greatest talmidim, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, as a single, young man to see what he could do for Yiddishkeit. He remained in the city for almost 70 years and became renowned as one of America’s top halachic authorities, the posek sought after by most other poskim, people such as Rav Moshe Heinemann and Rav Yosef Rottenberg, for his halachic opinion. At the same time, he traveled to scores of places to be mesadeir gittin (the rav overseeing the procedure of a get), check mikva’os, eruvin, and kashrus, and whatever other halachic issues were needed.