Gateshead clings tenaciously to the charter established when two men broke off from Newcastle to form what is now the only shtetl left in Europe

Nestled in the northeast corner of England, a stone’s throw from both the coast and countryside and close enough to the Arctic to shiver from the bite, lies a peaceful twenty-first century shtetl — the town of Gateshead.

Founded in the 1880s by two bold, principled Eastern European immigrants, Gateshead has marched to its own drumbeat since its inception. While change in a community of this size inevitably tiptoes in in various ways, the kehillah is intent on retaining the character it inherited from its founders — a strong flavor of yesteryear.

Home to approximately 400 families today — all of whom are shomrei Torah u’mitzvos — the Jewish community of Gateshead is one of the few remaining authentic kehillos, with an infrastructure that is guided by its rav, assisted by a governing committee. Not merely another small, secluded community, Gateshead has a pulsating heartbeat — its commitment to Torah learning and living.

The kehillah is spread across a half-square mile, encompassing a dozen or so streets. Although small in area and population, it is blessed with an abundance of prominent roshei yeshivah and rabbanim and boasts numerous Torah institutions: four prestigious yeshivos (Gateshead Yeshiva Gedola, Yeshiva Ketana, Sunderland Yeshiva, and Ba’er Hatorah); two seminaries (the august Gateshead Seminary and the younger Beis Chaya Rochel); seven kollelim; and boys’ and girls’ kindergarten, primary (elementary) and secondary (high) schools — perhaps the highest concentration of Torah institutions in Europe.

On Giants’ Shoulders

In their wildest dreams, the kehillah’s founders, Zelig Bernstone and Eliezer Adler zichronam livrachah, could not have imagined the explosion of Torah they were igniting. Unhappy with the diluted standards of Yiddishkeit they encountered in England, they arrived in Gateshead in 1887 with the objective of forming a new shomer Shabbos kehillah.

At that point, a steady trickle of refugees from the Russian Pale of Settlement had been making its way to England, settling near the coast in Newcastle, which is separated from Gateshead by the River Tyne. Many Jews had begun to assimilate. Services in the main shul in Newcastle, Leazes Park Road Synagogue, aped the church, with little of the warmth or the authentic Yiddishkeit of der heim. The direct catalyst for the breakaway kehillah of Gateshead was a kashrus scandal. Newcastle had no kosher butcher at the time, allocating instead a section of the local nonkosher butcher shop for kosher meat, with a mashgiach. Inevitably, treif meat was accidentally sold as kosher.

Infuriated, Zelig Bernstone lashed out at the mashgiach, shouting that he was a “treife kop.”

“If you don’t like it,” came the response, “get out of town.”

And that’s precisely what Zelig did. Heaving all his worldly possessions onto a wagon, Zelig Bernstone journeyed to Gateshead, where he and Eliezer Adler gathered a small group of shomer Shabbos balabatim to form the beginnings of a new kehillah.

The turning point in the kehillah’s development was the arrival in 1926 of Rabbi Dovid Dryan z”l, talmid of the Chofetz Chaim, who was hired as the shochet, chazzan and cheder teacher. His catchphrase, “Es ken zein doh a yeshivah [there can be a yeshivah here]” was met with scorn. “Azoi vi s’ken vaksen doh groz,” people answered, pointing to outstretched palms, “ken zein doh a yeshivah.” [Like grass can grow here (on this palm), there can be a yeshivah here.]

But Reb Dovid clung to his dream. Persuading two bochurim from Leeds to join him, he sat them down in the famous tin-roofed “Blechener Shul” and told them to learn. In response to his request for a rosh yeshivah, the Chofetz Chaim sent Rav Nachman Dovid Landynski, son of Rav Moshe Landynski, the rosh yeshivah in Radin.

Following the rise of ugly tensions in Germany in the early 1930s, the yeshivah saw an influx of German bochurim, necessitating additional maggidei shiur after the war — Rabbi Leib Lopian, Rabbi Moshe Schwab, and Rabbi Leib Gurwicz zecher tzaddikim livrachah.

Rabbi Dryan also sent out invitations to several rabbanim to form a kollel in Gateshead. Out of approximately twenty invitations extended, only one person responded — Rav Eliyahu Dessler ztz”l, who threw himself into the challenge of building the Gateshead kollel, which eventually gave rise to all of today’s mosdos hachinuch in the community.

“The real revolution,” in the words of Mr. Yosef Schleider, parnes (chief communal leader) of Gateshead, was the opening of the Gateshead Seminary in 1944 by Mr. Avrohom Dov Kohn z”l. Rav Dessler and Rav Mordechai Miller ztz”l inculcated the seminary girls with an unprecedented pride in marrying b’nei Torah, and thus helped bring about the transformation of the modern Torah world.

The position of parnes of Gateshead dates back to the nineteenth century. Mr. Schleider, an insightful and articulate man in his mid-sixties, speaks passionately about his kehillah.

“The town is a net exporter of talent right across the world,” he says. “Had we kept everyone who has been through this place, we would have a much bigger town. Just look at the alumni of Gateshead and Sunderland Kollel, where they’ve gone to and what they’ve built up, and you’ll see it’s a process of geometric — not arithmetic — expansion. What’s come out of Gateshead has added to every other place across the world, in absolute disproportion to its size.”

A glance at contemporary leading rabbanim around the globe indeed reveals a large number of Gateshead alumni, among them Rav Mattisyahu Salomon, Rav Yitzchok Tuvia Weiss, Rav Avrohom Gurwicz, Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu Dayan Aharon Dovid Dunner and rabbanim and dayanim in numerous batei din.

“Rav Tuvia Weiss shlita, gaavad of Yerushalayim, told me that his years in Gateshead were the happiest years in his life,” says Mr. Schleider. “He said he would come back tomorrow if he had a chance.”