The first modern institution of the kollel, as we know it today, was founded in Kovno in 1877. The famed Kovno Kollel grew into the primary institution for the development of the next generation’s Torah leaders. At various stages, Rav Yitzchak Elchonon Spektor, Rav Yisrael Salanter, Rav Itzele Blazer, the Alter of Slabodka, and the Dvar Avraham, among other Torah giants, were involved in the activities of the kollel. Later, the kollel would merge with the Slabodka yeshivah. Among the many luminaries to have studied there are Rav Dovid Leibowitz, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Yitzchok Ruderman, and Rav Chaim Telzer.
At the onset of World War II, the rosh yeshivah of Slabodka, Rav Isaac Sher, was in Switzerland being treated for an illness. As the situation worsened back home, the elderly rosh yeshivah was able to receive coveted entry papers to Palestine, immigrating there in 1941 with the hope that the yeshivah would soon join him there. Initially living in Jerusalem, he would give mussar talks to groups of talmidim in Chevron and other yeshivos. He then set out to reestablish his illustrious yeshivah in Bnei Brak.
Following the war, he was joined by his son-in-law Rav Mordechai Shulman, who had been stranded in the United States. With the assistance of an established Slabodka alumni base in America, which was led by Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Ephraim Pelcovitz, and Rav Moshe Don Sheinkopf, he embarked upon a campaign to build a campus that would eclipse the state-of-the-art building that the yeshivah had moved into in Slabodka just months before the Soviets closed it.
The cornerstone-laying ceremony for the new building was a grand affair, held on the last day of Chanukah 1946. Rav Sher declared, “Since the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has nothing in His world aside from the four cubits of halachah. The same applies to us. After the terrible destruction of Europe’s Torah centers, we have nothing but the four cubits of Torah — the yeshivah.”
Create a free account to keep reading.
