He was educated in the traditional manner at a Talmud Torah, an elementary yeshiva, and by private tutors, as his parents realized his great mental powers. By 22 he moved to Berlin, Germany where he remained for almost a decade studying at the University of Berlin, simultaneously maintaining a rigorous schedule of intensive Talmud study.

In 1931 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the epistemology and metaphysics of the German philosopher Hermann Cohen. In that year he married Tonya Lewitt (1904-1967), who had earned a Ph.D. in education from Jena University. He studied the work of European philosophers, and was a lifelong student of neo-Kantian thought.

During his years in Berlin, he made the acquaintance of another young scholar pursuing a similar path to his own - Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner who would become the Dean of the Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin also in Brooklyn, New York . Both of them developed a system of thought that bridged the Eastern European way of traditional scholarship with the new forces of modernity in the Western World. It is suggested that he also met with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, during this time. However Soloveitchik's son has denied that they ever met in Berlin. [1] In 1932, after his 1931 marriage to Dr. Tonya Lewitt (1904-1967), he immigrated to the United States and settled in Boston.


Boston
He would refer to himself as "The Soloveitchik of Boston". He pioneered the Maimonides School, one of the first Hebrew day schools in Boston in 1937 where he originally intended to settle and resided there when not teaching in New York. When the school's high school was founded in the late forties, he instituted a number of innovations in the curriculum, including teaching Talmud to boys and girls studying in classes together. He involved himself in all manner of religious issues in the Boston area. He was at times both a rabbinical supervisor of kosher slaughtering - shchita- and gladly accepted invitations to lecture in Jewish and religious philosophy at prestigious New England colleges and universities. His own son-in-law was on the faculty of Harvard.

New York

Rabbi Soloveitchik, right, teaching Talmud to advanced students.He followed his father, Rabbi Moses (Moshe) Soloveichik, to become the head of the RIETS rabbinical school at Yeshiva University in 1941.

Not satisfied that young Orthodox women were granted the opportunity to study at their own academic college (Stern College of Yeshiva University), he advocated more intensive textual Torah studies for Jewish women, giving the first class in Talmud inaugurated at Stern College, the women's division of Yeshiva College - University. With his enlightened outlook, he attracted and inspired many young men to become rabbis and educators, together with their wives coming with similar education and values. They in turn went out with the education of Yeshiva University to head synagogues, schools and communities, where they influenced many Jews to remain Orthodox.

His children married prominent academics and Talmudic scholars: his daughter Tovah married Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel (with a PhD from Harvard University); his daughter Atarah married the late Rabbi Dr. Isadore Twersky, former head of the Jewish Studies department at Harvard University (who also served as the Talner Rebbe in Boston). His son Rabbi Dr. Haym Soloveitchik is a professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University. His siblings include Dr. Samuel Soloveitchik (d. 1967), Rabbi Ahron HaLevi Soloveitchik (1917-2001), Mrs. Shulamith Meiselman, and Mrs. Anne Gerber. His grandchildren have maintained his heritage and also hold high scholarly positions.

As he got older he suffered several bouts of serious illness. Family members cared for his every need and distinguished people came to visit him in his last years in Boston, where in 1993 he was laid to rest at the age of ninety.


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taken from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dov_Soloveitchik)