Here are some descriptions of R’ Lichtenstein by R’ Aaron Rakeffet which I have culled over the years from R’ Rakeffet’s shiurim (all are direct quotes transcribed):
To be exposed to R’ Aharon is to be exposed to yesteryear, which I’ll come back to very shortly this morning. To be exposed to R’ Aharon is to see a gaon, a real gaon, and a real tzaddik up close, and it’s worth every effort in the world – if you came to Gruss, with all due respect to myself, and some of the other rebbeim I think will agree with me, to know R’ Aharon is a unique moment in time.
If I can quote one of the Gross boys, he says “Rebbe, even if they don’t understand him, just to look at R’ Aharon, to see a gaon v’tzadik up close, is worth everything.”
When I was a kid in the Rav’s class, he was our, our, our idol; everyone looked up to him; he was baki in shas already; it was unbelievable.
I know (from? of?) students of mine who studied in Ponevezh; they told me there’s no one in Ponevezh that comes to R’ Aharon’s bekius (in? of?) Shas and Rishonim.
R’ Aharon Lichtenstein who I knew intimately, we sat in the Rav’s shiur together; I mean you knew Aharon at the age of… in his twenties already he was the gadol hador, there are no two ways about it.
And you gotta remember, we still have R’ Aharon Lichtenstein with us. No one understood the Rav better. They had chutzpa calling R’ Hershel “prize talmid”, “prize of Halachic Man”. The prize talmid is R’ Aharon Lichtenstein. “Great talmid” R’ Hershel, fine, that I’ll agree with, but the prize is R’ Aharon. Al zeh leit man d’palig. Everyone asks me who were the Rav’s greatest talmidim, I’ll tell you from each generation. Every ten years I’ll give you a different name, who I think, arguably… [skip tangential discussion about the greatest centerfielders -PAA] so you can argue from today to tomorrow, but the greatest student was R’ Aharon. He’s the prize.
Gentleman, I need not tell you who R’ Aharon Lichtenstein is. We already knew he was a gadol shebegedolim when we first met him in 1951.
They live in Brooklyn and R’ Aharon goes to Chaim Berlin, he graduates high school at the age of fourteen. Next two years he sits in the Chaim Berlin Beit Medrash and he goes through all of shas. I do not believe R’ Aharon has gone through shas al haseder since then but already at the age of 16 he knew all of shas by heart. He could find you any gemara anywhere.
The Rav remembered gemaras by heart but Moshe, he couldn’t remember the exact daf, and he said nu nu Aharon [skip Yiddish -PAA] where is the gemara in in… R’ Aharon would shoot back Bava Kamma tzadi bet amud aleph. In four years of watching this interplay, R’ Aharon was only wrong once. It was a gemara in Arvei Pesachim, I remember the sugya, and R’ Aharon said kuf aleph amud bet, and the quote the Rav was quoting was kuf bet amud aleph. It was the continuation. He was off by about two lines.
He was very close to R’ Hutner. He was very close to R’ Aharon Soloveitchik. Those two people in Chaim Berlin, extremely close. [skip tangent -PAA] He was very close to the Lomzha Rav and of course he later becomes Mori V’rebbe’s son-in-law, and I don’t like to say that because cynics say Oh yeah, he achieved what he did because he’s the chatan d’vei nassi is the talmudic expression, and it’s absolutely not true. R’ Aharon would have been R’ Aharon, R’ Aharon without without being the Rav’s son-in-law. But if anyone was more… [skip foreign languages -PAA] There was no one [more foreign language -PAA] more fitting in my time to be the Rav’s son-in-law than R’ Aharon. And we loved him. He was, R’ Aharon was R’ Aharon and we knew, we knew he was unique, he was different.