Daas Torah can often surprise us, but the answers to our questions are often clearer than we could have imagined
Rav Pam was too weak to walk down the stairs, but that didn’t stop him from fighting for another school with the strength of a lion
Thirty-three years ago, RAV AVRAHAM PAM, rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, founded the Shuvu movement, cultivating and cherishing it like a precious child for the remaining ten years of his life. I had the zechus of working under Rav Pam for those ten years, directing Shuvu and bringing his dream to life by providing a Jewish education to the children of Russian immigrants here in Eretz Yisrael.
In those years, we had two main annual fundraising events in the States, a dinner in the winter, and a parlor meeting in the summer. Every summer, I would prepare a detailed report on the Shuvu network and send it as a letter to Rav Pam, and he would then use it to describe the situation to our supporters at the parlor meeting.
During the last year of Rav Pam’s life, the financial situation of Shuvu was precarious, and I shared the numbers and details with Rav Pam. I also wrote him that we had received a petition from over 100 parents in the town of Natzeret Illit (today called Nof HaGalil) asking us to open a Shuvu school. “We will be forced to say no,” I wrote. “There is no way we can take upon ourselves to open another school. It is not feasible.”
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