The origin story of the miraculous rebirth of the Torah world after the Holocaust is captivating

Title: The Torah World in Transition
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Document: Donation receipt
Time: October 14, 1963

The origin story of the miraculous rebirth of the Torah world after the Holocaust is captivating. Visionary leaders in both the United States and Israel, such as the Ponevezher Rav, Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, and Rav Aharon Kotler, partnered with a cadre of lay leaders who secured funding for nascent institutions. Brave parents sent their children to these yeshivos, which was certainly not the accepted trend then. Communal infrastructure sprang up around these Torah schools, and the young students themselves of course deserve the biggest share of the credit.
The long-term results of these prodigious efforts are evident to everyone in contemporary religious society. The proliferation of Torah, yeshivos, and talmidim is widely celebrated. One can easily draw a line from the investments of a courageous few in the 1940s to the product of that determination and perseverance: the burgeoning yeshivah community in 2025.
But the demographic explosion of the yeshivah population didn’t happen overnight. It is all too easy to miss the long and gradual development that took place over those decades. Every new yeshivah, every new building was another step in the journey. An occasional retrospective can give insight into the invaluable story of the process itself — which should certainly be celebrated.
In October 1963, famed Yiddish writer Nison Gordon traveled to Israel to cover the developing yeshivah community for the Der Tog Morgen Journal newspaper. This astute observer wanted to focus on American yeshivah students pioneering the trend of coming to Israel for a couple of years to study Torah. This trend would get a big boost after the Six Day War in 1967, but its early stages were already evident during Gordon’s visit.
In just one article, Nison Gordon covered a lot of ground. He managed to profile the prestigious Sephardic yeshivah world and its flagship yeshivah, Porat Yosef; the early rise of Brisk under the able leadership of Rav Yosha Ber Soloveitchik; and American arrivals at Chevron Yeshivah and Kol Torah.
In the early 1960s, there weren’t that many yeshivos yet, and their student bodies were also small. But nearly two decades after the devastation of the Holocaust, the numbers were growing, and the arrival of Americans filled the atmosphere with an unbridled optimism and enthusiasm for Torah. Yeshivos were flourishing, growth was evident in both the United States and Israel, and the horizon seemed exciting indeed.
As an invaluable snapshot of this “in between” era of Torah growth, Gordon’s article follows in its entirety, in a first-ever English translation.

American Yeshivah Students in Israel

From my recent walk through several yeshivos in Jerusalem, accompanied by Rabbi Avraham Sher, general secretary of the Council of Yeshivos, I wanted to capture a few images and episodes that reflect the vibrancy of Torah study in the Holy Land, where the number of yeshivos is 181 and the number of students is 12,198 (according to the latest statistical figures from the Ministry of Religious Services).
First, one must understand that in Israel, the term “yeshivah” still carries the European meaning. Kindergartens, or even schools where boys begin learning Gemara, soon after or shortly before their bar mitzvah, are not called yeshivos in Israel. There, a yeshivah student is someone who, at a minimum, is engaged in advanced Talmudic study with Tosafos from the age of 14 or 15 until he is a young man of several decades, continuing his studies in a kollel. Our American small yeshivos, which we take such great care of, are, according to the Israeli standard, Talmud Torahs or religious schools — but not yeshivos.
Our first stop was at a Sephardic yeshivah, the largest of its kind in the entire Jewish world, named Porat Yosef. The yeshivah, located in Jerusalem on Malchei Yisrael Street, adjacent to the Gerrer court, has a magnificent large study hall for the students, something not seen in America, and it is still under construction due to lack of space.
In a Sephardic yeshivah, studying in Hebrew is not a novelty, especially in a country where it is the national language. What I found novel here was the integration of the Ashkenazi method of study among the Sephardic students. They are engaged in vigorous debate at their desks, with books by authors from Poland and Lithuania spread around.
A unique feature of Sephardic tradition is the patriarchal figure of the old rosh yeshivah, Rabbi Ezra Attiya, who walks the streets with a shawl over his head to protect him from the sun, in the measured steps of an elder. He came to Jerusalem 63 years ago from Aleppo and has experienced both hardships and warmth here.
“The Torah is one... there is no difference who the author of a book is, as long as it is from the source of our Torah of Life,” says the old Sephardic Rosh Yeshivah serenely, mixing a Gemara with Maharsha and Maharal, side by side with Rif and Rosh.
Beside the old Rosh Yeshivah sits the administrator of the yeshivah, also a Sephardic rabbi, named Rabbi Yehudah Tzadkah. (If you forget his name, he gives you a verse [Bereishis 38:26] as a sign: “Yehudah declared, ‘She is more righteous than I.’ ”) He tells me that in the yeshivah, students from Argentina and Brazil, and other countries where Jews are found, study together with those who originate from Arab countries. There are no students from America at Porat Yosef, although there are a significant number of Sephardic Jews and schools in America.
During my discussion with the people at the Sephardic yeshivah, the conversation turned to the acronym “samech-tet” that Sephardim add after their names. It is usually understood that “samech-tet” means “Sephardi Tahor” (pure Sephardi), a confirmation of the pure lineage of the person named, or “Sof Tov” (“good end”), a blessing in the style of our esteemed leaders or scholars.
Rabbi Yehudah Tzadkah, the director of Porat Yosef, however, expressed the opinion that somewhere there is an interpretation that translates “I am dust and ashes” as “sinah u’teinah” (hatred and suffering), and “samech-tet” is therefore a humble statement of one’s own insignificance that a Sephardi might add after his name.
Regardless of what the acronym “samech-tet” may stand for, the atmosphere at Porat Yosef makes you feel that you are dealing with Sephardim who carry high the banner of their lineage, preparing for large undertakings in the future, while also being humble and friendly people, as all interpretations of “samech-tet” might suggest.
Not far from the Sephardic yeshivah stands a house that has personified Lithuanian scholarship and greatness in its full scope and whose children continue in the same path. The house of Rav Yoshe Ber “Berel” Soloveitchik, the eldest son of Rav Velvel Brisker ztz”l [the Brisker Rav], at 2 Menachem Street, is a modest apartment with simple furniture that is quite outdated in style. But here, in this cramped apartment, a significant number of advanced students gather every day to hear a lesson that draws together threads from the depth and thought of Brisk — from Rav Yoshe Ber (the Beis HaLevi) and Rav Chaim [Brisker].
The young men and boys who study with Rav Berel, as Rav Velvel’s eldest son is known in the Jerusalem yeshivah world, sit and study regularly at the Achva shul [in the Zichron Moshe neighborhood], and they come to the house of the Rosh Yeshivah for lessons. And indeed, here in the elite group, which studies with Rav Berel Soloveitchik — a cousin of our American Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik from Boston and New York — I met a young man from the Bronx, who Jerusalem scholars have testified is among the best, if not the best student, in the Brisker group. This young man is named Chaim Ozer Gorelik, named after the great rabbi from Vilna [Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski], and a son of Rav Yerucham Gorelik of the Bronx, a rosh yeshivah at Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan and himself one of the distinguished scholars in the world of learning and also in action for Torah in America.
“Do you correspond with your famous cousin in America?” I ventured to ask Rabbi Soloveitchik of Jerusalem.
“In Brisk, we do not write letters,” came the quick response, with an addition that he had indeed met his cousin’s son-in-law, Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, when the young rosh yeshivah and scholar was visiting Israel. “We talked in learning, and he is a great scholar,” noted the Jerusalem Soloveitchik about his cousin’s son-in-law, who is an assistant rosh yeshivah of his father-in-law at Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan and a professor at Stern College.
“Does this mean there is room for both, for Torah and secular knowledge?” I tried to ask Rav Berel, knowing how staunchly the house of Brisk in Jerusalem opposes studying anything other than Torah.
“Sometimes it worked... an exception... and from an outsider,” he did not let me wait long for his answer. “And one doesn’t bring proof from exceptions.”
That scholars can emerge from America whom even Brisk in Jerusalem would welcome is evident not only from the elite student, Chaim Ozer Gorelik from the Bronx, but also from the youngest son-in-law of Rav Velvel’s, who is an American-born yeshivah student, whom his rabbi, Rav Aharon Kotler ztz”l, had recommended to Rav Velvel’s daughter. Rav Yaakov Schiff, the son-in-law being discussed, is renowned throughout Jerusalem for his Torah and piety, and his parents in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn must be very proud of their son.
Also, Rav Velvel’s older son-in-law, Rav Michel Feinstein, is “half-American,” having lived in New York for several years until his father-in-law wrote to him to come back home to Israel. Today, Rav Michel leads a kollel in Tel Aviv and his name as a disseminator of Torah is highly esteemed in the scholarly world. The best testament to the progress of Torah in America came to me from the Rosh Yeshivah of the Chevron Yeshivah, Rav Yechezkel Sarna, a son-in-law of the great sage Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein of Slabodka.
“How do your current American students compare to those who used to come to study in European yeshivos?”
Rav Sarna claps his hands together, as if to emphasize the distance between then and now. “Back when a boy from America came to a European yeshivah, he would, even the best among them, have to hire a private rabbi to support him, review the shiur with him, and help him through the reading. Today, your boys come to us in Israel and we cannot recognize them as being from that America of the past... Today, they understand learning well... They are fine scholars...
“People say that everything in America is a bluff... I tell you, that bluff itself is also a bluff!” Rav Sarna states with the joy of a rosh yeshivah discovering a new logical reasoning.
Not everything in America is a bluff. Certainly, the yeshivah students who come from America can truly learn! According to official figures, the number of American yeshivah students in Israel reaches between 400 and 500, although I have heard from other unofficial sources that the number is much greater.
At the Frankfurt Yeshivah, Kol Torah, in the Bayit Vegan area of Jerusalem, three American boys asked me to send a greeting to the US. A walk through the yeshivos in Jerusalem not only provides immense encouragement about the future of Torah in the Holy Land, but also the realization that that America also occupies a very important place on the Torah map. You see American young men whom the heads of yeshivos regard highly. And you hear from the heads of yeshivos, who make you feel proud of America, on which it was mistakenly thought that its soil was not fertile enough to produce Torah scholars.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1073)