Chazon Ish החזון איש
authority of the Haredi world in the Land of Israel, lawgiver for a new state
Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz was born in Lithuania in 5639, lived quietly, published the first volume of «Chazon Ish» anonymously and held no post. In 5693 he came to the Land of Israel and settled in Bnei Brak, then a small town. Within a few years questions were being brought to his door from across the country.
He answered what had never been asked before: electricity on the Sabbath; milking cows on a kibbutz; modern measurements for ritual quantities; the laws of the sabbatical year for a Jewish agriculture that had become a mass reality for the first time in two thousand years. His rulings still define Haredi practice.
His meeting with Ben-Gurion in 5712 is famous: asked how the religious and the secular could share a road, he answered with a parable of two carts, one loaded and one empty — the empty one yields. He supported the arrangement exempting yeshiva students from military service, and died in 5714.