All those who score higher than 50 percent may bestow upon themselves the lofty title of amateur historian
Remember the prize: All those who score higher than 50 percent may bestow upon themselves the lofty title of amateur historian and be the official arbiter on Jewish historical topics at the Shabbos table and yeshivah coffee rooms (sort of like us).
Rav Shlomo Polachek (1887-1928), the Meitscheter Illui. The original Volozhin Yeshivah was closed down by the czarist government in 1892, and the Meitscheter found himself in Brisk with his rebbi Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. After some time, he was recruited by the Alter of Slabodka, who had an eye for geniuses and heard about him from his son Rav Lezier Yudel. He also spent a short time in Kelm, but the very independent Meitscheter didn’t take to the mussar system.
On 15 Cheshvan 1953, Rav Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, the Chazon Ish, passed away in Bnei Brak at the age of 74. About nine weeks later, on 24 Teves in the same city, Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, mashgiach of Ponevezh, left this world in an untimely fashion at 61. In the interim, Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, passed away in Yerushalayim on 10 Kislev at 83. (We know we wrote seven weeks in the question, but we had some Purim drinks and fulfilled the requirement of not knowing the difference between seven and nine.)
World War I wreaked havoc on Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement, and many became refugees. Some made it to Ukraine, where they were welcomed and cared for by local Ukrainian Jews. Several yeshivos made it to Kremenchuk: Slabodka–Knesses Yisrael, under the leadership of the Alter of Slabodka, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, and Rav Moshe Mordechai Epstein; Slabodka–Knesses Beis Yitzchak with Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz; and the central yeshivah of Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch. As most of the town’s religious Jews were Chabad chassidim, the latter yeshivah was in a natural setting. A branch of Novardok Yeshivah was exiled there as well.
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