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for three years to do his doctorate on the Chafetz Chaim.
As the reader of Studies in Halakhah and Rabbinic History sees
in chapter after chapter, Rav Eitam did not write hagiogra-
phies, but did write as a Torah scholar who was fully aware
of the greatness of the gedolim. The doctorate would have
brought all of his analytic abilities to the table. He would
have given the world a work of first-class scholarship, on
his own way to becoming one of our great poskim.

Though the book includes topics ranging from the
kashrut of strawberries to the Bruriah episode to
the history of the Mussar movement, he seems to
have been drawn to rabbinic history, and in par-
ticular to great figures from the end of the 19th
and beginning of the 20th century like the Aruch
HaShulchan, Rav Kook and Rav Henkin. What drew
him to that period and to those personalities in
particular?
Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin, hy"d
He had a different connection with each of those figures. The
real Eitam. Was he a Torah scholar in the daled amot shel last two great codes of Ashkenazi halachah were the Aruch
halachah (the four cubits of Torah law), or was he a gifted HaShulchan and Mishnah Berurah, both written in the same
historian on his way to an academic career in rabbinic his- 25-year span. In our family, the tradition we have from the
tory? The truth is, he didn’t separate these two spheres. gaon Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin zt”l is that when there is a
As a halachist, he needed to fully understand the historical machloket (disagreement) between the Mishnah Berurah and
background; you can’t decide halachah in the abstract, you the Aruch HaShulchan, we pasken like the Aruch HaShulchan,
need to see the issue in real life. The same is true of rab- as he was a rabbi of a city, not a rosh yeshivah. It was natural
binic history; if you don’t grasp the halachic nuance, you
don’t understand the history. And so the two fields were
not separate for him.
Many people, including professors and a whole range of
others, corresponded with him to get information. We met
some of them, but we don’t know about many others. But
no matter whom he spoke to, he never hid who he was or
put on a false posture. He was just himself.
He also brought his character traits to bear in his academic
work. He once spent a number of months collecting material
to write about Maharil Diskin. A famous professor reached
out to him to ask for some source material, and Eitam sent
him the full file of sources he had painstakingly gathered.
For someone who is focused on glory and titles, that would
have been unthinkable – they would have wanted to keep
the materials for themselves to be able to write the big arti-
cle. But Eitam was humble and generous, and was prepared
to share his research with others.
When he was about 23 years old, and he and Naama were at
our Shabbat table, he casually mentioned that he was plan-
ning to do his doctorate under Professor David Assaf. At that
point, we hadn’t known he planned to go to college! At the
shiva, Professor Assaf told us of his astonishment to discover
a wonderkind sitting in a kollel with no academic training,
but who was writing as a seasoned academic scholar.
A few months before the murder, Eitam told us that he had
been awarded a Rotenstreich Fellowship. We had no idea he
had applied for it because he didn’t talk about these things.
He was thrilled, because it meant he would have parnassah Sukkah decoration designed by Naama Henkin hy"d

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