When Rav Gershon Edelstein was tapped by the Ponevezher Rav to give shiur in a nascent yeshivah on a hill in Bnei Brak, it was a charge that would continue for seven decades and counting
T here’s nothing obvious — none of the screaming ceremony signs or vendors or photographers — to mark Bnei Brak’s better-known addresses on Chazon Ish and Rashbam Streets. But the observant eye catches the quiet rustle of activity.
There’s another building just one in a row of featureless yeshivah apartments lining Rechov Raavad in the shadow of the Ponevezher yeshivah the name Edelstein penciled in on top of the mailbox. In the narrow stairway a class of cheder children awaits their audience with the Rosh Yeshivah and on the third floor landing representatives of an international tzedakah organization stand in a huddle formulating their question.
The decor inside is predictable — seforim and more seforim. Noteworthy is the Shas each volume worn and faded so that you can’t even make out words on the binding and high atop the shelf is a section of Kabbalah seforim even though the Rosh Yeshivah was never known as the mekubal of the family.
That was his brother Rav Yaakov ztz”l.
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