Rav Teitz launched the first-ever radio broadcast of a Gemara class in the mamme loshen
INour age, it hardly seems novel to use modern technology to study and disseminate Torah: From Dial-a-Daf to the All Daf app, from Torah Tapes to YU Torah, Jews have every conceivable medium available.
But all these efforts stand on the shoulders of the pioneers who came before. And one of the first initiatives was the Daf Hashavua radio show produced by Rav Pinchas Mordechai Teitz, the rabbi of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Commencing in 1953 and continuing for 36 years, Rav Teitz would broadcast a weekly Gemara shiur, from after Succos until before Shavuos, at 9:30 p.m. Motzaei Shabbos. At its peak, it was estimated that the live broadcast and syndicated recordings had nearly 200,000 listeners.
Rav Pinchas Mordechai Teitz (1908–1995) was born into a prestigious rabbinic family in Subate, Latvia. His great uncle was the Aderes, and when the family fled during World War I, they took refuge with his uncle Rav Eliyahu Akiva Rabinowitz, the rabbi of Poltava and a dynamic leader in Russia. Pinchas subsequently studied in Ponevezh, Riga, and Slabodka. His six years in Slabodka left a lasting impression on him, and he became a close student of Rav Yosef Zusmanovich (the Yerushalmi). He spent nearly a year in Dvinsk in close proximity to the Rogatchover Gaon, Rav Yosef Rosen, and emerged as a communal activist in Latvia, involving himself with Agudas Yisrael and establishing chadarim across the countryside.
In 1933–34, while accompanying Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch on a fundraising mission to the United States on behalf of Telz Yeshiva, he was introduced to Basya Preil, daughter of the late rabbi of Elizabeth, Rav Elazar Meir Preil, who had stipulated in his will that whoever took his daughter’s hand would inherit the rabbinate. Rav Teitz remained at the helm for six decades, transforming the community. With a keen sense of perception of the needs of American Jewry, he invested his energies in building the vast educational infrastructure of the Jewish Educational Center (JEC), with the motto he coined — “Love Torah, learn Torah, live Torah” — as its modus operandi.
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