Originally from Warsaw, Hutner first studied the Torah in Slabodka. He then traveled to Mandatory Palestine where he became a student of Abraham Isaac Kook, and narrowly escaped the 1929 Hebron massacre. After this, Hutner returned to Europe, where he befriended Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, maintaining friendships with both long after they had all established their own institutions in the United States.