As a society we’ve grown so accustomed to the phenomenon of baalei teshuvah that it’s hard to think of a world without the thousands upon thousands who have left a productive yet secular life behind and embarked on a path so foreign to them. But in the early 1960s the trend was virtually unknown. Two centuries of Enlightenment had dealt a devastating blow to world Jewry and the trend toward secularization seemed to be on the rise as the peace-and-love movement spread through the world.

In 1966 however a handful of men saw opportunity brewing in the form of a few Jewish college students who were thirsting for connection for a chance to experience the light of Torah. Young idealistic and motivated they established the first-ever baal teshuvah yeshivah. Although that yeshivah fell apart a year later due to funding difficulties the key members of this group were undeterred.

In 1972 four visionaries — Rabbi Noach Weinberg Rabbi Mendel Weinbach Rabbi Nota Schiller and Rabbi Yaakov Rosenberg — reestablished a yeshivah for baalei teshuvah under the name Shema Yisrael. Several years later they decided that the name Shema Yisrael was too huge a concept to belong to just one institution so they renamed their yeshivah Ohr Somayach the name it has held for the four decades since. And in those four decades two of the initial group continued to run and expand Ohr Somayach building it into a worldwide movement: Rabbi Nota Schiller shlita and Rabbi Mendel Weinbach ztz”l who returned his soul to his Maker last week.