At the international convention of Agudas Yisrael in Vienna in August 1923, Rabbi Meir Shapiro introduced two revolutionary ideas to the Jewish world. The first was daf hayomi – the study of one page of the Talmud daily and in unison by Jews throughout the world. His second great idea was to make a universal yeshiva in Poland, one that would be different from other yeshivas. Not only would the students be top quality inside and out, but their building would be too.Yeshivas in Europe, for all the greatness they represented spiritually, were not architectural masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination. It was not like today where yeshivas in Eretz Yisrael and the United States have nice buildings. They even have dining rooms (with food) and dormitories. That is not the way it was. The yeshivas in Europe were often in impoverished areas and looked it.
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This prestige had been sorely diminished by the ravages of Haskalah, socialism and communism, as well by secular Zionism. He envisioned creating a magnificent institution, both physically imposing and spiritually inspiring, that would help stem the tide of assimilation and loss of Torah observance that was then affecting Polish Jewry.
He had a friend, Shmuel Eichenbaum, one of the wealthiest Jews in Lublin, who owned an empty lot, Lubitrovska 57, which was like owning a piece of land on Fifth Avenue in New York City. He turned to him and said, “Shmuel, give me that piece of land and we’re going to build a yeshiva there.”
When the Nazis took Lublin during World War II, they stripped the interior of the yeshiva and burned the vast library in the town square. The cries of the Jews watching their yeshiva and holy books burn to the ground were so loud that the Germans called for the army band to come and stifle their cries of
This prestige had been sorely diminished by the ravages of Haskalah, socialism and communism, as well by secular Zionism. He envisioned creating a magnificent institution, both physically imposing and spiritually inspiring, that would help stem the tide of assimilation and loss of Torah observance that was then affecting Polish Jewry.
He had a friend, Shmuel Eichenbaum, one of the wealthiest Jews in Lublin, who owned an empty lot, Lubitrovska 57, which was like owning a piece of land on Fifth Avenue in New York City. He turned to him and said, “Shmuel, give me that piece of land and we’re going to build a yeshiva there.”
When the Nazis took Lublin during World War II, they stripped the interior of the yeshiva and burned the vast library in the town square. The cries of the Jews watching their yeshiva and holy books burn to the ground were so loud that the Germans called for the army band to come and stifle their cries of