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Agudas Yisroel Convention Analysis

Decent Essays

Yeshivas Chochmei Lublin
Agudas Yisroel Convention, Vienna, 1923. The streets are teeming with Jews. Rabbonim, Rosh Yeshivos, Paskonim and Gedolim have all gathered to discuss the communal, political and cultural aspects of Orthodox Jews. During the convention, the voice of the holy Rav Meir Shapiro can be heard. He has introduced two grand ideas to the crowd. The first: Daf Yomi - the study of one page of the Talmud daily by Jews throughout the world. The second: to make a grand Yeshiva for boys who had top qualities inside and out. Not only would the boys be of top quality but the building would be too.
Yeshivos in Europe then were not like Yeshivos nowadays. The Yeshivos then were impoverished, dilapidated and often in very bad condition. Rav Shapiro wanted to raise the status of the Yeshiva student in the eyes of Polish Jewry. This status had been terribly diminished by the rapid growth of communism, socialism, Zionism and the Haskalah. Rav Shapiro envisioned the making of a magnificent, spiritually uplifting and inspiring Yeshiva, that would fight the waves of assimilation and lack of Torah observance, affecting the Jews of Poland.
Rav Shapiro had a friend, Shmuel Eichenbaum, one of the wealthiest Jews in Lublin. He owned a plot of land on Lubitrovska 57, which was like owning a piece of …show more content…

Apart from the local Jews , around 10,000 people from all over Poland and abroad came to participate in the Yeshivas grand opening. The Yeshiva was magnificent! The words – “Yeshivas Chochmei Lublin” were inscribed in gold letters on the front of the building. The Yeshiva had a dormitory, a garden, landscaping, electricity and even indoor plumbing! It had a library with 20,000 volumes that Rav Shapiro wanted to increase to 100,000. (The Nazis burned the entire library in one night in the street in front of the Yeshiva.)The Yeshiva became known as the “Oxford of the Yeshiva World”. It was truly an awe-inspiring

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