The Vaad was established in 2001 by a group of senior students studying at the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in Brooklyn, and is under the auspices of the Yeshiva faculty.
Gutnick was born in Zolotonosha, Ukraine; soon afterwards his family moved to Tel Aviv, and then in 1927 to London, where his father, Mordechai Ze'ev Gutnick, a graduate of the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva, served as a Chabad rabbi.
These included contingents of the famed yeshivas of Kamenetz, Kletzk, Lubavitch, and Lublin.
Schochet assumed his first position as rosh yeshiva of Tomchei Temimim in Lod, Israel, from 1972 to 1973.
Arriving in this country in 1958, he attended the Central Lubavitcher Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim at 770 Eastern Parkway in New York City.