Just weeks after Rav Aharon’s arrival in Americaon Erev Pesach of 1941, the Nazis invaded Soviet-occupied Lithuania andbrought an end to the golden age of Torah study in Eastern Europe. Rav Aharon pleaded with Schmidt to help arrangea transfer of the fragmented Lithuanian yeshivah world to the United States.īut it was not to be. Samuel Schmidt in Yanova, Lithuania, wherehis yeshivah had relocated.
He had recently met withAgudath Harabonim emissary Dr. The rosh yeshivah was alone, separated from his students -albeit not for lack of trying to bring them to safety. The attendees were an assemblage of senior yeshivah students from NewYork yeshivos such as Torah Vodaath, Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef (RJJ), and acouple of others. Rav Aharon Kotler, rosh yeshivah of the famous Kletzk yeshivah, had recently arrived in the United States, and they’d come to hear him speak - as much out of pity and respect as out of ideology. IT was the spring of 1941, and a small crowd gathered at a little shul on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side of New York. That wide-lens view accompanied him throughout his life, marking him not only as the Rosh Yeshivah who transformed America’s relationship with Torah learning, but as the leader who burned with a constant urgency to rescue, restore, initiate, rally, and support the growth of Torah wherever Jews could be found. Even then, he displayed a sense of concern and responsibility for the wider Torah world, taking initiative and accepting burdens far beyond his own yeshivah. With penetrating vision and powerful determination, he inspired a Torah revolution on three continents - but that’s just part of the story.įor more than 20 years prior to his arrival in America, Rav Aharon Kotler was one of the leaders of Torah Jewry in Europe, standing alongside fellow gedolim a generation older than he. Rav Aharon was the Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai of his time, tasked with picking up the pieces after the staggering destruction of the Holocaust. Rav Aharon delivering a shiur at the Bialystoker Synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side Such was an encounter with Rav Aharon Kotler. Despite not having understood, that image is engraved in my mind for eternity.” The energy he exuded, the pathos of his speech, and the glow of his face made it a surreal experience. His flaming blue eyes bore into the souls of all present. His face was beet-red with excitement and exertion. The boy obligingly goes inside and listens, not understanding a single word.ĭecades later, he still recalled the scene: “I saw an older man speaking with a passion I had never seen before or since. The man asks him incredulously, “How can you play outside when Rav Aharon Kotler is delivering a shiur? How can you lose your chance to hear him speak?” He is approached by a Mirrer talmid who spent the war years in Shanghai. Waxman, YIVO, Torah Umesorah Archives, Chinuch Atzmai Archives, Perr Family, Golding Family, Bunim Family, TAJ Art and Judaica, Feivel Schneider Boro Park, Brooklyn, late 1950sĪ child is playing outside a shul. Photos: BMG Archives, Agudah Archives, DMS Yeshiva Archives, Wolfson Family, Hoberman Family, Kamenetsky Family, National Library of Israel, US Dept of State, Prof. Rav Aharon Kotler inspired a Torah revolution on three continents - but that’s just part of the story
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