Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Hutner zt”l was born in Warsaw in 1911. His father, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Hutner zt”l, was one of the most important rabbinic judges in Warsaw, while his grandfather, Rabbi Yosef Zundel Hutner zt”l, rabbi of Eišiškės in Lithuania, authored books and novellae on the Talmud and the Shulchan Arukh. Another grandfather, from the side of his mother, Batsheva, was Rabbi Yehudah Halevy Segal, one of the elder rabbis of Warsaw.
Rabbi Yehoshua studied at Yeshiva Toras Chaim in Warsaw, Chafetz Chaim in Radin, and Sha’ar HaTorah in Grodno. He was a student of the Chafetz Chaim and Rabbi Shimon Shkop zt”l. In 1935 he immigrated to Israel and studied at the Harry Fischel Institute in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Hutner was one of the founders of the Yad Harav Herzog Institutes - the Encyclopedia Talmudit and the Institute for the Complete Israeli Talmud, which he administrated and guided for over fifty years until his passing on April 20, 2009.
Alongside the organizational management of the Yad Harav Herzog Institute, Rabbi Hutner was involved both in the formulation of the editorial and writing policy of the Encyclopedia Talmudit and the Complete Israeli Talmud project, as well as the editing of each and every volume. In this capacity, Rabbi Hutner devoted a significant portion of his time to locating different manuscripts of the Talmud and analyzing the variations in the wording of these manuscripts.
His writings include the introductions to volumes 1-27 of the Encyclopedia; a survey of the work of Rabbi S.Y. Zevin (in the introduction to volume 16); the article “Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan and the Encyclopedia Talmudit,” in HaDarom 49 (1980); further essays on the Encyclopedia Talmudit in Shana Beshana 1982, and Hamaayan 47:3, April 2007; parts of Sefer HaNer on tractate Bava Kamma chapter 1 (Sefer Zikaron [Book of Remembrance] for R’ Yitzchak Yedidyah Frankel); a discussion of responsa from certain Rishonim in Sefer Zikaron for Rabbi Bezalel Zolty; articles on Rav Abraham Isaac Kook in Sinai journals; and an article on Polish Jewry between the World Wars, in Sinai, September, 2006.