A sheaf of crumbling letters paints an intimate portrait of prewar yeshivah life

Photos: Chayim Stanton

When brothers Heiri (Elchonon) and Scholem Erlanger from Lucerne left home in the 1930s to learn in yeshivos in Hungary and Poland, they were definitely an anomaly. While Jewish life in their Swiss city was wholesome and frum, Torah education wasn’t of a high caliber. Children attended non-Jewish schools and supplemented their education with basic after-school Hebrew classes, whose curriculum didn’t include Gemara.

Determined that his sons would learn Torah, their father, Yaakov Erlanger, hired a haus-lehrer, a melamed, to teach his four sons. It would prove to be a pivotal move. Dr. Michoel Posen from Frankfurt, a genius who had no less than seven doctoral degrees, would change the trajectory of the boys’ future. As young adults, while the Erlanger boys were inclined to make aliyah and develop agriculture in Palestine with the Religious Zionist youth movements, Dr. Posen convinced their father that they needed to learn in yeshivah.

While this wasn’t a common move in Switzerland back then, in 1933, Scholem Erlanger left home to learn in Shopron, Hungary, where Dr. Posen’s brother, Rabbi Shimon Yisroel Posen, served as av beis din and led a yeshivah. (The Posen brothers were scions of a German rabbinic family, but Rav Shimon Yisroel had changed direction and became a distinguished chassidish rav.) Scholem became very close to the Ruv, whom he viewed as a surrogate father. After two and a half years in Shopron, during which he served as the Ruv’s haus bochur, he moved on to learn at the larger yeshivah in Galanta.

Meanwhile, his older brother Heiri (Elchonon) Erlanger left Lucerne in 1935 to learn in the Lithuanian-style yeshivahs of Baranovich and then Mir. Feeling that nothing could come close to the intense learning of those yeshivahs, he urgently called Scholem to join him. After some persuasion, and receiving the blessing of the Shoproner Ruv and the Galanta Rav, Scholem acquiesced and joined his brother in the Mir. The two brothers learned together until 1939, when the rumblings of World War II reached Poland and cut their time short.

Mr. Reuben Erlanger is Scholem’s son, a 14th-generation Swiss Jew (on his mother’s side) who relocated to Manchester, UK in 2021 once the Lucerne community dwindled. He produced a book about Erlanger family history for the family’s thousands of descendants. Among his extensive collection of Judaica and memorabilia of Lucerne’s Jewish history, he holds a treasured collection of a few hundred letters sent by his father Scholem and Uncle Heiri to their parents, Yaakov and Rosalie Erlanger in Lucerne, Switzerland, recording the highlights and day-to-day tidbits of their yeshivah days in vivid German prose. Mishpacha explores some highlights from this important and revealing collection.

First Impressions of Shopron

From: Scholem Erlanger,

Where: Shopron, Hungary

Date: December 10, 1933 (Scholem 16 years old)

Mr. Reuben Erlanger sets the scene:

The move from Lucerne, a city in clean, orderly Switzerland, to Shopron, Hungary, offered plenty of surprises for my father

My Dear Ones,

I hope you received my card on Friday night. I received the lovely letter and card, and thank you very much for them. You have no idea how much good it does me to receive mail here in a foreign country. Papa, I didn’t know that you weren’t so well, but I’m glad you’re feeling better. I wish you, dear Mama, a refuah sheleimah, too.

You can’t imagine how much I like it here. Everyone is so decent and kind to me, the food is very good, and I can see clearly how I’m getting better at my learning, week by week. By now I know the city quite well.

One evening last week I went for a walk with Shteiner. Among other things, I told him that yeshivah life was more expensive than we had been told. He was so kind and promised me coal from his brick factory, 100 kg of which costs about 4–5 pengö. Perhaps I’ll go over to his house this evening and listen to the Swiss national radio station.

Last night I went to “Melaveh Malkah,” which is a wonderful custom where the bochurim sit together after dinner, drink tea, sing, dance, say Torah, and thus accompany the Shabbos Queen. This lasted until 12 a.m. This morning I was late for davening because of this and had to pay a fine of 12 heller [a coin smaller than a pengö].

It’s very cold here. When I went out onto the street this morning, the tears kept running down my face because of the cold; everyone was staring at me.

I’ve seen so many interesting things just in the time I’ve been here. It’s only here that I realize how clean and modern Lucerne is. There is only one (bedbug-free!) hotel in this city of 40,000 inhabitants. Everything is much more old-fashioned than in Switzerland. And yet this is one of the most beautiful cities in Hungary. There’s one thing that is wonderful, though. Just as you hear Ländler [folk] music in the taverns in Switzerland, here you hear wonderful Gypsy music from the restaurants. There are a lot of Gypsies here. The shabby women wander around the streets, with their children wrapped up.

Here, in Hungary all [Jewish] boys over the age of twelve are not entitled to passports and they have to do two hours of national service every Sunday. I watched them last week and it was really funny to see how the bochurim here, with their rolled-up peyos and half-grown beards, marched in step.

I got my coat and it fits well and only needs a few small alterations.

Mr. Breuer also took me to a [Jewish] dentist who will do some of the work that Dr. Fabian couldn’t finish. It’s a real shame that Mr. Posen [Dr. Michoel, the haus lehrer] won’t be coming for Shabbos Chanukah. We’ll be celebrating a siyum, and it’s supposed to be a big celebration.

By now I’ve certainly written all of the news.

Warm greetings to all of you,

Your loving Scholem

PS I ask you, Heiri and Bertha, to collect Swiss stamps and include them in every letter, because so many people have already asked me for them.