(continuing from last week) On the 28th of Cheshvan 5702 (October 28, 1941), Rav Eliyahu Meir Bloch and Rav Chaim Mordechai Katz, together with a nucleus of their students and several other young men, established the Telshe Yeshiva of Cleveland. They did not yet know the full extent of the tragedy that had befallen their families and colleagues in Europe those details would only emerge after the war. But they understood their sacred mission: to ensure that the Torah of Telz would not perish from the earth. This school of Jewish learning was to become one of the largest Torah institutions in America. After visiting the Telz Yeshiva in 1946, Rav Eliezer Silver published a statement revealing his happiness that at last America was home to "Yavneh and its sages" an allusion to the famous story of Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai, who had asked the Roman emperor Vespasian to spare Yavneh and its scholars during the destruction of the Second Temple. In 1954, the institution formally changed its name to the Rabbinical College of Telshe. In 1957, it relocated to a new 57-acre campus in Wickliffe, Ohio, on the old John H. Devereux estate. Enrollment reached 305 students that year, about 40 of whom came from abroad. In 1959, the yeshiva established the Yavne Teachers Seminary for women, and a teachers' seminary for men was created in 1961. From the original Telz in Cleveland came branches in Chicago (established in 1960), Riverdale, New York (established in the early 1980s by Rav Avraham Ausband, a grandson of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Bloch), and a community in Kiryat Ye'arim in Israel known as "Telz-Stone." Today, thousands of talmidim continue the Telz mesorah that traces back to its founding by Rav Meir Atlas and his colleagues. The Tragic End of the Shavel Community The Shavel community that Rav Meir Atlas had led also faced destruction. Before World War II, Shavel was home to approximately 8,000 Jews, making it the second-largest Jewish community in independent Lithuania. The city boasted fifteen shuls, a yeshiva, libraries, and a kehilla that had produced countless Torah scholars. German soldiers entered Shavel on June 26, 1941. During the first weeks of the Nazi occupation, thousands were murdered in the nearby forests. The remaining Jews approximately 5,000, including 1,500 from surrounding areas were forced into two ghettos. By war's end, only about 500 Jews from Shavel survived. Among those born in Shavel was Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zť"l (1910-2012), grandson of the Leshem, who would become the gadol hador of his generation. His family immigrated to Eretz Yisroel in 1922 with the assistance of Rav Kook. The coat that Rav Kook gave to the Leshem on a cold winter evening became a family heirloom, and was periodically worn by Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv on wintry days - a tangible connection across generations of Torah greatness. Eternal Merit Rav Meir Atlas was niftar on Wednesday, the 12th of Shevat 5686 (January 27, 1926) in Shavel, having served Klal Yisroel for nearly five decades as Rosh Yeshiva, Rav, and posek. His influence extended far beyond the communities he directly served, through the yeshiva he helped establish, the teshuvos he authored, and most profoundly, through the remarkable family of Torah giants who married into his household. The Meytzik llui had become the patriarch of a dynasty of gedolim. The humble maggid shiur who chose the lower level had been rewarded with an eternal legacy. His grandfather's beis medrash in Baisagola had produced the teacher of the Chofetz Chaim; his own daughters married the Rosh Yeshiva of Baranovitch and the Rav of Vilna. The yeshiva he founded continues to produce talmidei chachamim to this day. In the darkest chapter of Jewish history, when the Nazis and their collaborators sought to extinguish the light of Torah from Europe, the seeds that Rav Meir Atlas had planted bore fruit an ocean away. The Torah of Telz was transplanted to American soil, where it flourishes to this day. Thousands of bachurim learn in institutions that trace their lineage to those ten students who gathered in 1881 under the tutelage of Rav Meir Atlas and Rav Tzvi Yaakov Oppenheim. As we commemorate his yahrzeit, we recognize that every bachur learning in a Telz-affiliated institution, every student studying Rav Elchonon's seforim, every community that benefits from the Torah scholarship that traces its lineage to Lithuanian Jewry, owes a debt of gratitude to this remarkable gaon and tzaddik. The partnership between a brilliant young talmid chacham in Baisagola and a German Jewish inventor in Berlin changed the course of Jewish history - and continues to shape it today. (Rabbi Yair Hoffman)
