Rav Sholom Ber Sorotzkin has now acquired the old building of Telshe Yeshiva in Telshe, Lithuania. According to reports he is going to use the building for a yeshiva he will be opening there
Honestly, from a nostalgia perspective this is nice. Beyond that I dont see any reason for this. Who is going to learn there and why? It seems like a big waste of money and resources. Rav Sorotzkin is a descendant of Roshei Yeshiva from Telshe. In the past he has taken rocks and bricks, along with the original doors, from this old building and brought them to Israel to be placed in his yeshivas here in Israel (he mentions it in this publicity video he made several years back, which I have posted here in the past). I wonder if he will ship the original doors back and install the, back on the original building for his new yeshiva.
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Completely agree. The fetishization by certain groups of Chasidim of the places where the Chasidus began, with things popping up every once in a while on how they've re-acquired this or that Rebbe's "Kloiz", has apparently now spread to the Litvish. It's really ironic too, in that if the founders of these institutions had been told that, instead of having their base in eastern Europe, they could have it in Eretz Yisrael, they'd have jumped at the chance. Now, some of their spiritual successors are running to bring their followers away from Eretz Yisrael and back to eastern Europe...
ReplyDeleteAnd if I may be so bold, the same goes for Berlin, which now boasts Orthodox, Conservative, *and* Reform seminaries. (The latter two are kind of the same institution, but still: Did Germany *really* need seminaries?)
DeleteAnd maybe my kehuna gives me a more flippant attitude toward graves, but I can't understand the efforts to preserve cemeteries in a continent that is basically a giant Jewish cemetery.
Of course, Volozhin was also site of some huge fight, with Chabad finally getting the building over a non-Orthodox group.
There's a bit more logic to the Berlin situation in that there has been a growing Jewish population there - mainly from the ex-USSR - over the past three-plus decades. The attitude is that since there are Jews there, they need institutions. With Telz and the Chasidim, though, the only Jews around are the ones in the cemeteries.
DeleteWill the new yeshiva have a high school offering a full secular education and a women's seminary, like the original Telz did?
ReplyDelete