What Is a Yeshivah?

Title: What Is a Yeshivah?

Location: Cleveland, Ohio

Document Interview with Rav Mottel Katz

Time: 1950s

I commented recently about a new craze in America — the belief that it’s impossible to get any job, even as a chimney sweep, without a college degree. To this I add: granted the bnei hayeshivah won’t become chimney sweeps. But they will become talmidei chachamim and gedolei Torah!

Our entire purpose in life is achieving gadlus in Torah and yiras Shamayim. If a person fails to achieve this, he remains as pitiful as a chimney sweep. This is our attitude, and for this purpose we should exert ourselves with all our strength — that we should raise gedolei Torah. It is only through toiling in Torah that a person can cleave to his Creator.

—Rav Mottel Katz (Shiurei Daas)

 Internal disputes over the place of mussar in the yeshivah curriculum led to Rav Yosef Leib Bloch leaving the Telshe Yeshivah of his father-in-law, Rav Eliezer Gordon, in 1902. He was later appointed rabbi of nearby Shadova, where he opened his own yeshivah. One of his prime students there was Rav Chaim Mordechai (Mottel) Katz (1894–1964), born in Shadova to Rav Yaakov, a respected maggid shiur; his mother, Rochel Leah, came from distinguished lineage through her father, Rav Shmuel Yosef Havsha.

When Rav Yosef Leib returned to Telshe after his father-in-law passed away in 1910, he agreed not to bring his Shadova talmidim with him, so as not to dilute the Telshe Yeshivah’s unique atmosphere. So a young Mottel Katz traveled to Slabodka, where he joined Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz’s Knesses Beis Yitzchak yeshivah. He later moved on to Telshe, remaining there until the outbreak of World War I, when he joined the Volozhin Yeshivah for two years, receiving semichah from its rosh yeshivah Rav Refael Shapiro. During this period, he was also privileged to forge a relationship with Rav Shlomo Polachek, the Meitscheter Illui, who particularly appreciated Rav Mottel’s grasp of the distinct derech halimud of each yeshivah.

Even as his parents and several siblings emigrated to South Africa, the young Mottel showed his dedication to Torah by staying behind.