Eight figures who made sizable postwar contributions to Jewish life in a variety of fields
Thank you to Rav Yaakov Bender, Rav Shlomo Zev Carlebach, Rav Yisroel Meir and Rav Mordechai Stern, Eli Neuberger, and Akiva Yasnyi for their assistance with this column.
The great Torah centers of Eastern Europe saw only a handful of students venturing in from Germany in the decades after Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch founded his separatist Frankfurt community in 1876. That trickle of Yekkehs increased to a stream with the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933. The largest contingent — peaking at nearly 50 young men — joined the Mir yeshivah in Poland.
For veteran Mirrers, this was an interesting turn of events. Traditionally German Jews referred to their brethren in the Russian Pale as Ostjuden (Eastern European Jews), with more than a hint of condescension. But these fresh imports were eager to show what they could offer. Well advanced in secular education (some even had PhDs), they quickly adapted to the abstruse form of critical thinking needed to grasp difficult sugyas. They even accustomed themselves to life in the primitive Polish backlands — a far cry from the modern conveniences they’d been accustomed to in Germany.
The deutsche drank in the mussar shmuessen of Rav Yerucham Levovitz, who also established a Chumash shiur exclusively for the German and American students. The content of these classes was subsequently published in the six-volume set Daas Torah.
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