Part Two of the Answers to the 2022 Trivia Quiz

Here are the answers to Part Two. How’d you do on Part One?

11. What major event occurred in the 1960s that served as a catalyst for the growth of the American yeshivah world?

The Vietnam War. Until then, the visionary efforts of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, Rav Aharon Kotler, and others had led to a burgeoning yeshivah movement, but most students terminated their studies with high school graduation. Following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, President Johnson increased the US military presence in Vietnam via the Selective Service Act. The draft lottery in 1969 expanded it further. Divinity school students were eligible for deferment, and many continued yeshivah studies to avoid the draft. This led to a sudden rise in post–high school yeshivah attendance.

12. What did all synagogues in the US until 1795 have in common?

They were all Sephardic. Descendants of Spanish exiles dominated Jewish communal life in America for centuries. Shearith Israel — the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue in New Amsterdam (now Manhattan) — was founded in 1654. The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, began in 1658. Congregations Mikveh Israel of Philadelphia and Savannah were both Sephardic, as was Beth Elohim of Charleston. The first Ashkenazi shul was Philadelphia’s Congregation Rodeph Shalom in 1795, and when B’nai Jeshurun opened in New York in 1825, it was only the third Ashkenazi congregation in the country.

13. When did the first sefer Torah arrive in America, and to which city?

In 1655 the leaders of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue (known as the Esnoga) loaned a sefer Torah to the aforementioned Shearith Israel of New Amsterdam. This was the first sefer Torah in North America. As prospects for the future of Judaism in America began to dim, the Torah was returned to the Netherlands and given to the community of Amersfoort in 1663. Little did they know….

14. How many Jewish day schools were there in 1936 in America outside of New York, and where were they?

The only full-time Jewish day school outside of New York in 1936 was Talmudical Academy of Baltimore (later Chofetz Chaim), founded in 1917 as Baltimore Parochial Hebrew School by Rav Avraham Nachman Schwartz.