A few days back in yeshivah can transform your whole year

Photos: AIA, Aryeh Leib Abrams

The concept of Yarchei Kallah — busy men clearing their schedules to immerse themselves in a week of limud Torah — has its roots in Talmudic times, when former talmidim would return to their yeshivos during the months of Elul and Adar, when agricultural activity was typically slow.

During these Yarchei Kallah (literally “months of assembly”), talmidim would arrive from their various locales and re-enter the yeshivos of their youth for a month of reconnection and spiritual uplift. Before returning home, the attendees would present halachic questions to the roshei yeshivah.

Later, in the era of the Geonim, the Yarchei Kallah was a central feature of the great yeshivos of Sura and Pumbedisa. In addition to the Torah learning that took place, the Yarchei Kallah ensured that a connection was maintained between the Geonim and the wider Jewish communities of the Diaspora.

While the yeshivah landscape has undergone centuries of change since the days of Sura and Pumbedisa and agricultural cycles no longer determine vacation schedules, the revival of today’s Yarchei Kallah still create opportunities for alumni to stay connected with their rebbeim, chaveirim, and their former Torah centers, taking advantage of other “off times” during the year (Thanksgiving week being one of them).

Mishpacha spoke with organizers of four prominent Yarchei Kallah programs to learn about these special weeks of uninterrupted Torah study and the message to alumni that a talmid is always welcome back to his spiritual home base, and that despite its growth and innovation, the yeshivah is still very much the same unique makom Torah it’s always been

Yeshivas Mir Yerushalayim in Jerusalem, Israel

Number of attendees: 300

When: Thanksgiving week

Chanoch Zundel Hershkowitz, the director of the Mirrer Yeshivah’s American office, has been arranging the yeshivah’s Yarchei Kallah since 2008.

How It Started 

IN the winter of 2007, the Mir Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel ztz”l, was fundraising in America. At one event, he met with a group of talmidim who had recently left the yeshivah, and one of them proposed a Yarchei Kallah. Rav Nosson Tzvi, who was very pleased with the idea, said it should be for at least one month, and he suggested the talmidim come for Elul. That wasn’t realistic for most of them, so the idea was put on hold.

At the yeshivah’s annual American dinner right after Purim, there was a big push for participation from a lot of the younger alumni. Whereas in the past the dinner focused on high-net-worth donors, that year, the younger alumni were mobilized to participate, and even though they couldn’t contribute financially like the older donors, their participation brought a fresh energy to the alumni base and the yeshivah in general. When Rav Nosson Tzvi saw the participation at the dinner and how excited alumni were to connect to the yeshivah, he made a spontaneous announcement during his dinner address that the next Elul there would be a Yarchei Kallah open to all the yeshivah’s talmidim — and he specified that the program duration would be whatever was most realistic for them.

The following Elul, a few talmidim got together to organize a weeklong Yarchei Kallah. It garnered just under 30 participants — all young former talmidim who had recently entered the workforce. They were all starting to feel the tension that comes with walking out of the beis medrash and into a demanding job and the lifestyle shift that accompanies that transition, and here, they were sitting in yeshivah for a week to hear shiurim and refocus.

Looking back, though, the program was pretty simple: the yeshivah arranged accommodations at a nearby hotel, the cook prepared an upgraded menu and hired a waiter to serve meals, and everyone shuffled some chairs in one of the batei medrash to make room for the 15 or so chavrusashafts. To the talmidim in the yeshivah, it felt as if a barely noticeable new chaburah had formed, but to the participants it was transformative.