This Is My Place

In honor of Rosh Chodesh Elul… an exploration of the yeshivah — past and present, form and function, haven and home

Step into a yeshivah, and you enter a world of its own.

Some compare it to a teivah – that single safe refuge hermetically sealed from a world flooded with debasement and immorality.

But the yeshivah is also akin to a workshop providing each student with the right environment, tools, and mentors to produce an enduring work of infinite value: the masterpiece that is his very identity.

In honor of Rosh Chodesh Elul and the return of our yeshivah bochurim to these portals of spiritual potential, an exploration of the yeshivah – past and present, form and function, haven and home.

Haven & Home: Seven Stories of Homecoming

They entered yeshivah as newcomers, unsure of their places in this new and unfamiliar world. Then came a moment, an encounter, a realization that made it clear: Here, in this yeshivah, is where I belong.

Yeshivas Ponevezh: Thunder in Bnei Brak

Reb Abish Brodt, Veteran sheliach tzibbur, Lakewood, NJ

I was a chassidish young man who grew up in the Bobover cheder of Crown Heights, going on to learn the niggunim and traditions of Galician Jewry. But it was a thunderous Yom Kippur davening in a litvish citadel in Bnei Brak that grabbed my neshamah.

When I reached bar mitzvah, mesivtas in America with dorms were in their infancy. Most bochurim headed to Telshe in Cleveland, or stayed local, attending Torah Vodaath or Chaim Berlin. I went to a third option — Bais Shraga in Monsey. It was a unique place that benefitted from the influence of the talmidei chachamim who learned next door in Beis Medrash Elyon. Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz was the inspiration, his son Reb Shmuel Mendlowitz was the menahel, and the tzaddik Rav Mordechai Schwab was the mashgiach.

I attended Beis Shraga from age 13 to 16, and that is what propelled me forward. My grandfather urged my parents to send me to learn in Eretz Yisrael — an uncommon step at the time — and so at 16, I found myself the youngest American bochur in Ponevezh.

There were ten or 15 Americans there in total, some Europeans, and the rest were bochurim from Eretz Yisrael. It was an unexpected and glorious mix of talmidim: the children and grandchildren of all the rebbes and gedolim of Eretz Yisrael were there, rebbishe eineklach, and sons of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach among boys from so-called “simple” families — anyone who wanted their sons to learn knew this was the place.