Within just a few years of Rav Elchonon’s assurance, people who would teach and spread Torah arrived on America’s shores
Eighty-seven years ago this Shabbos, the “Old Shul” of Lakewood, New Jersey, as it became colloquially known, hosted one of the preeminent gedolim of prewar Europe, Rav Elchonon Wasserman of Baranovich, Hashem yikom damo. Rav Elchonon spent eight months in America that year, in a valiant attempt to raise desperately needed funds for his poverty-stricken yeshivah.
While Rav Elchonon was repulsed by the tumah he felt in certain parts of the United States, even describing the “odor of Gehinnom” emanating from Times Square, he was still largely upbeat about the prospects of America’s Yiddishkeit. All that was lacking, he insisted, was proper education. “Everyone told me that America is not fit for Torah,” he said. “But that is not true. On my travels I have seen many pure Yiddishe kinder, temimusdig kinder. In some respects, they are purer than the children in Europe. All that is needed is someone to teach them Torah. If people undertake to spread Torah, they will accept it.”
Within just a few years of Rav Elchonon’s assurance, people who would teach and spread Torah would arrive on America’s shores, chiefly among them Rav Aharon Kotler in 1941. In due time, Rav Elchonon’s prediction was fulfilled. The Yiddishe kinder accepted what they were taught and the Torah scene flourished.
Today, the Old Shul itself pays rich testimony to that optimistic outlook. It is Lakewood’s original beis knesses, bearing a dated facade and an interior that hints at the shul’s century-long presence. On a wall in the antechamber hangs a framed Jewish Journal newspaper clipping from 87 years ago this Shabbos, announcing that on Shabbos Chanukah of 1938, “der groise gast… der bavuste gaon v’tzaddik” would spend Shabbos in that very shul.
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