for a change i completely agree with cantoresq. unlike Yussel, i was going to blast him until i read the bottom, and realized he was quoting someone. he is dead on, nowadays there is no room for debate. the fact that harav yoshe Ber ran circles around the “rabbonim” of his day is completely ignored. in the us there was no one like him, maybe except his brother, reb ahron. now understand that he was around before his cousin, rav moshe, and his close chaver, reb ahron soleveitchik were here. remember he STARTED agudas yisroel of america! it is when the hungarian chassidim came to america, and started flexing their muscles in agudah, that he went his separate ways. like reagan said about the dems, i didn’t leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me, so he felt. Rav soleveithchik didn’t leave aguda, aguda left him. his halchik decisions about mizrachi and the ny board of rabbis was no differant then say rav moshe’s about chalov stam, and reb yoel teitlebaum about medinas yisroel. they were all toras emes! and anyone who mocks the other is a pure fool. yes you can disagree, as i do with lets say reb yoel teitelbaum who was a goan olam anbout the median, but to say yoele teitlebaum was an idiot fool wearing a fur hat would be chtzpadik, as is calling Harav yoshe Ber – jb.
on a side note, i was in a seforim store one day, and 2 kids were sitting there making fun of a pictire for sale, the rwere saying, hah its that shack guy, and making spitting sounds. have no clue what was up with that, but i wlked over to stop them. i look at the picture, and lo and behgold, the kids were a bunch of punks, it was rav moshe, i guess the litvishe yarmulka threw their chutpadik tachtonim off. forst i said, your both isdiots, as that is rav moshe feinstein, then i said, what chtzpa do you have irregardless of the fact that it is nt rav shach, to make fun of a man 70-80 years older then you, again irregardless of the fact that he is one of the gedolei yosroel! their answer, our rebbe doesnt like him. i got fuming, and called their yeshiva and without saying which rebbe, that their talmidim, are being chozek rav shach, and they were shocked, and said they would look into it. so the roblem here is not the ppl, but the rebbeim who in shiur smack rabbonim who dont tow the line, like rav yoshe ber, who by the way technically had more talmidim then anyone eles in his generation. (ok, some of them may have gone on to do things that we can call questionable, but not all).
same goes for rav kook. he was such a tzaddik, that as a bochur, he was the only one the Netziv allowed to wear tefillin all day! the netziv was known to say that if the volozhin yeshiva was only created to teach rav kook, then it would have been worth it. when he came to eretz yisroel many thought he was moshiach, so again, its rabbeim who put nonsense in bochurims heads