The story of Rav Yitzchak Scheiner is the tale of a rosh yeshivah who went from a public high school senior in the 1930s to become the torchbearer of the great Kamenitz tradition
Photos: AEGedolimphotos.com,, Mattis Goldberg, YDT Archives
One day in 1938, a roving rabbi and meshulach doing the rounds of the great American Jewish hinterland ventured beyond his normal route into a less affluent suburb of east Pittsburgh.
Of all the city’s 60,000 Jews, Rabbi Avraham Bender — a menahel of the Slonimer Yeshivah in Poland turned emissary of New York’s Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan – trusted the kashrus of just three Pittsburgh families. One of those was the Scheiners, whose teenaged son Isadore had just graduated from Peabody High School and was planning on going to college to study mathematics.
The young man made a good impression, and turning to his host, Rabbi Bender asked, “Why don’t you send your son to yeshivah?”
“Are there still yeshivahs in America?” replied the elder Scheiner, unaware of the glimmerings of a religious future growing in New York. So the Scheiner boy, an only son, accompanied the guest back east to Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan.
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