Wings and Prayers   

Despite the fact that the sirens were quiet across Yerushalayim when Mishpacha went to sit down with Rav Yaakov Hillel, Rosh Yeshivat Ahavat Shalom, war was in the air as the Jewish people worldwide waited for Hamas to release innocents held hostage in Gaza.

A descendant of Chacham Avraham Hillel, av beis din in Baghdad, Rav Hillel was born in India, and then moved to England, where he studied in Gateshead Yeshivah before moving on to Ponevezh, where he became a close talmid of Rav Shach.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Rav Hillel founded his yeshivah, Chevrat Ahavat Shalom in Geulah — named after the yeshivah of the 18th-century mekubal Rav Shalom Sharabi — where he’s taught many gedolim from both the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Torah worlds. The expansion of the Ahavat Shalom institutions has made Rav Hillel one of the preeminent Torah teachers globally, with yeshivos, a kollel network numbering thousands of avreichim, a beis din, a national kiruv organization, and schools under his leadership.

From the beginning of the war, Rav Hillel has spoken to different audiences, from yeshivos to schools overseas, and groups of evacuees from the Gaza area. In conversation with Mishpacha, he discussed the roots of the conflict with Yishmael, the ray of chesed that was apparent in the timing of the attack, acting to combat the spread of anti-Semitic hatred throughout the world, and what to share with children about these difficult times.