More U.S. Parents Opting Children Out of Vaccine Requirements, C.D.C. Reports
At
a time when measles and other potentially deadly diseases are
spreading, more American children are receiving exemptions allowing them
to attend school without the routine childhood shots that can protect
against those illnesses.
Roughly 4
percent of kindergartners in the United States were given a nonmedical
exemption for at least one vaccine during the 2025-26 school year, a 18
percent jump from the previous year, according to new data released on
Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rise, the
largest annual increase recorded in more than a decade, comes as a growing number of states look to loosen vaccine mandates or even do away with them entirely.
Exemption
rates varied dramatically by state. While all states allow students to
opt out of vaccine requirements for certain medical conditions, some
also allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons.
In
Utah, which has some of the most relaxed laws around school vaccine
requirements, nearly 13 percent of kindergartners had a religious or
personal exemption for at least one routine shot. The state is also in
the midst of a monthslong measles outbreak that has infected more than
700 people. New York, which stopped allowing parents to opt out for
religious reasons in 2019, reported no non-medical exemptions.
The
new data has deepened concern among public health experts that American
communities are losing the levels of immunity needed to protect against
a number of highly contagious illnesses.
The findings were released a week after President Trump issued an executive order
calling for children to get fewer vaccines. While the executive order
cannot force states to change their vaccine policies, it was the latest
in a series of actions by the administration that experts have warned
are likely to undermine confidence in vaccine safety.
Even
small dips in vaccination rates can leave the nation vulnerable to
highly contagious diseases, like measles, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a
member of the infectious disease committee at the American Academy of
Pediatrics. The country is in the midst of the worst year for measles in recent history, as the virus continues to spread through pockets of under-vaccinated people around the United States.
“Even
though these drops in the last couple of years have been relatively
small, they’re meaningful,” Dr. O’Leary said. “They are leading us to
have diseases that we really should not see here in the U.S.”
In
a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services said that the
C.D.C. “continues to encourage parents to discuss vaccination options
with their doctors.”
The gap between a
large increase in exemptions, and only a minor decline in vaccinations,
could be at least partially explained by the fact that there were fewer
children this school year whose vaccination status was unknown.
During
the pandemic, the share of children with missing records — meaning
those who had neither a vaccination record nor an exemption on file — shot up.
But more families now seem to be filing formal exemptions, leading the
number to rise more dramatically than the vaccination rate has fallen.
Vaccination rates have been declining
in the United States for years. They fell during the Covid-19 pandemic,
as routine immunizations were disrupted and as mistrust in the medical
establishment grew, and they have not yet rebounded.
Still,
the new data show that childhood vaccination rates remain high overall:
About 92 percent of kindergartners received routine vaccinations for
diseases like measles, pertussis and polio.
“Despite
everything we’ve seen around vaccines over the past several years, the
large majority of parents continue to support vaccines and continue to
vaccinate their children,” said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor
of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health.
Public
health researchers noted that while a vast majority of parents are
still vaccinating their children, there are places within the United
States where rates are far lower than 92 percent. That includes in
places like Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and Spartanburg County, South Carolina — both at the center of large measles outbreaks this year.
The
rise in exemptions from vaccine mandates is a dangerous trend, said Dr.
Walter Orenstein, the former director of the National Immunization
Program at the C.D.C.
Vaccine
mandates also help protect children who cannot get vaccinated, and even
those who have gotten the shots, Dr. Orenstein said, since no vaccine
is 100 percent effective.
Many people
have gone so long without encountering a vaccine-preventable disease
like measles that they do not see the need to get immunized against it,
he added.
“Vaccines are victims of their own success,” he said. “And we’re beginning to see that even more.”
I
am furious and simply cannot believe that United States government and
its Health and Human Services Department is calling into question the
safety, efficacy and utility of vaccines….even Polio vaccines! What the
fu**! Vaccine hesitancy which includes delaying shots, accepting some
but not others, or outright refusal has become the official policy of
the current American government. This is simply madness!
According to
the report, combat soldiers made up 78 percent of all suicide cases in
Israel during 2024, a sharp rise from previous years. The rate hovered
between 42% and 45% from 2017 to 2022, and stood at just 17% in early
2023.
My heart is once again torn and hurting from receiving more devastating news.
Family
and friends attend the funeral of Zehava Shaul, mother of fallen
Israeli soldier Oron Shaul, at the Poria Illit Cemetery in northern
Israel, July 26, 2026.
As I am watching and hearing the loud noise from an IDF
helicopter flying above my house, two names that are deeply embedded in
my heart come to mind - Alex and William. I will explain why in a
moment.
I continued to watch the helicopter as it traveled over the beautiful Sea of Galilee,
where jet skis and speed boats race around on the lake as people enjoy
vacation time in Israel, instead of being hunkered down in bomb
shelters.
For a brief while, it looked like that would be our
reality again, as we were out shopping and mentally preparing ourselves
for another war with the evil regime in Iran. However, once again at the
last minute, the American president called off a major strike, which
reportedly would have included Israel.
So once again it was a very surreal reality for almost all of us living in Israel, not knowing what tomorrow would bring.
As
my time of staying here in the Galilee is coming to an end, I am
thankful for this time that has allowed me to continue healing and
recovering from so much trauma and death.
Ultra
orthodox jewish soldiers from the Hasmonean Brigade take part in a
beret march after completing seven months of basic and advanced
training, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old city on August 6, 2026.
Two souls tormented by war
And
yet, my heart once again is torn and hurting from receiving more
devastating news. The names I mentioned above - William and Alex- were
two young Jewish Americans who, out of love for their people and Israel,
traveled alone to Israel to enlist in the IDF.
Both of them
fought bravely for the Jewish Homeland against her enemies, it brought
scars and traumas so deep, that out of the desperation and trouble in
their souls, they both ended their lives after leaving Israel and
returning to America.
This news is absolutely devastating!
Alex
Miller was a 23-year-old man who was moderately wounded in one of the
many heinous terror attacks we had in Israel! It happened in a 2022
car-ramming attack near the Nebi Mousa training facility while he waited
with his fellow soldiers.
Alex
later returned to military service alongside his comrades in the Kfir
Battalion after undergoing a painful and difficult rehabilitation
process.
His family and friends explained how Alex fought deep
trauma for a long time that remained with him since that horrible terror
attack that wounded him. In addition to this, there was the emotional
pain and trauma that followed from the loss of his close friend, Noam
Shemesh, who was killed in battle in the Gaza Strip.
Alex
later returned to America, where he tragically ended his life. May he
rest in peace and may his memory forever be a blessing!
William
Shakin immigrated to Israel following the October 7 massacre and
bravely enlisted in the IDF through the Mahal program for overseas
volunteers. He served as a combat soldier in the Golani Brigade’s 13th
Battalion in Gaza, where he lost dear friends fighting alongside him,
which left him deeply traumatized.
During
his service, Shakin lived at HaBayit Shel Benji, which provides housing
for lone soldiers. After he completed his service, he returned to
America, where he tragically ended his life. May he rest in peace and
may his memory forever be a blessing!
My heart aches for the families of Alex and William, because there are just no words I can find to comfort them.
Suicides
and suicide attempts among IDF soldiers and veterans have surged since
the October 7, 2023, onslaught and massacre against Israel and the
subsequent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. At least 60 active and reserve
soldiers died by suicide between October 2023 and April of this year,
including 10 lives lost in this year alone.
279 active-duty soldiers attempted suicide in a short period
A
report published by the Knesset Research and Information Center last
October found that between January 2024 and July 2025, 279 active-duty
soldiers attempted to take their own lives. I must admit that all of
this tragic information is making me weep deeply.
According to
the report, combat soldiers made up 78 percent of all suicide cases in
Israel during 2024, a sharp rise from previous years. The rate hovered
between 42% and 45% from 2017 to 2022, and stood at just 17% in early
2023.
We can't even begin to imagine what our precious soldiers
have endured in facing these savages from Hamas and Hezbollah - year
after year -fighting this demonic evil that has attacked us.
The
toll from Israel just defending her nation and people, with so many
soldiers killed in battle, thousands of soldiers losing their limbs, or
thousands of soldiers permanently injured in varying degrees, including
soldiers with PTSD, is staggering.
As we now see some of them
being so deeply traumatized, they see no other way than to end their
lives; just how much is a nation supposed to take? And on top of all of
this, Israeli soldiers are being hunted around the world when they go on
some much needed vacation, its despicable!
On top of that, we
continue to get heartbreaking news from the battlefields: Two reservist
soldiers were just killed, and four were seriously wounded after being
hit by an explosive device in the southern Lebanon town of Majdal Zoun.
The
slain troops were named as: Maj. (res.) Harel Birenstock, 34, a company
commander from Nokdim; and Sgt. Maj. (res.) Tamir Vaknin, 33, from
Eilat. Both served in the 55th Paratroopers Brigade’s 2855th Battalion.
May their memory be a blessing
May they rest in peace and may their memory be a blessing.
It's just devastating; our hearts are breaking for their families.
The
Jewish Nation continues to bury its sons, either killed in battle or
killed by their own hands after experiences of unimaginable horror and
trauma; it shatters our hearts!
However, here is some good news
and some justice in the midst of so much heartbreak: the Israel Defense
Forces and the Shin Bet have acknowledged that a special operation has
been established with a dedicated unit named “Nili” to hunt down and
kill every single despicable terrorist involved in the October 7, 2023,
massacre on Israel.
Speaking
to Channel 12 news, some of the Nili officers openly described their
mission for the first time, detailing who has been targeted and the
means used to locate and kill them.
According
to the report, 2,800 people on Nili’s list have been killed, including
the 1,200 terrorists killed by Israeli security forces in southern
Israel during the horrific October 7th onslaught.
Among
those eliminated have been the terrorists who kidnapped 85-year-old
Yaffa Adar, 12-year-old Yagil Yaakov, Yarden Bibas, and Avinatan Or.
The
hate is not limited to our precious soldiers only; we see over and over
how Israelis are attacked while being on vacation around the world,
just like what just happened to an Israeli mother and daughter
vacationing on Thailand’s Koh Phangan Island.
They went to visit a waterfall where they encountered a man who asked where they were from.
After
the daughter replied that they were from Israel, the man began
confronting them over the war in Gaza, telling them, “I don’t like what
Israel is doing there,” and “I’m against violence,” and then he launched
a brutal physical assault on both women.
This
evil attacker beat the mother, repeatedly kicking her and striking her
in the head until she reportedly lost consciousness. When the daughter
ran to help her mother, she was brutally assaulted also.
The
mother underwent emergency treatment for internal bleeding in her head
and surgery on her ear. She is expected to have another operation, while
her daughter underwent surgery to repair injuries to her nose.
This is just one of the horrific attacks we see on Israelis travelling around the world, its horrifying.
What
has the world come to? But we know that a lot of this goes back to the
lies and nasty propaganda that Hamas sends out from the Gaza Strip, and
then it is broadcast by mainstream media without any filter to the
world.
This includes the never-ending lies about starvation and genocide in Gaza (which never happened), but the media ate these lies, and they ran with it, as if it was the truth.
On
the “consumer side” of mainstream media, it makes ignorant people
around the world believe these outrageous lies by Hamas and serves to
build up an unprecedented hatred towards the Jewish people and Israel.
It
is for that reason, when hateful people now encounter Israelis citizens
or Jews around the world, the hunt is on and they are being attacked in
the most brutal ways.
At the same time, we continue to bury our
sons and daughters in Israel, and others find themselves being
discriminated against, boycotted, and marginalized, while the world
looks away in shameful silence.
These
enemies can only spread lies, hate, and propaganda against the one
nation they can't defeat militarily or politically, because Israel is
divinely protected by the One Who created the Holy Land.
As for me, this is why I am here; this is why I endure the pain, the trauma, and the tears, because I will not stay silent!
I
will continue to cry for each and every one of them, and share their
names and stories with the world and stand united and mourn with all of
their families!
Today we honor Alex, William, Tarel, and Tamir!
How precious you were, you all died so young not getting to live a long and good life, my heart is just breaking.
Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz was born in the town of Willig in Hungary in 1886 into a family of G-d-fearing Sanzer chassidim. At a young age -- when he was already studying Shulchan Oruch Yore De'ah with Shach, Taz and the Pri Megadim -- he had acquired a name as a scholar who brimmed with deep religious passion. He studied under the Arugas Habosem, the B'eer Shmuel, and the Shevet Sofer, Rav Simcha Bunim Sofer --the three leading gedolim of Hungary at the time, and received semichah from them.
A person of deep complexity and contemplation, he pursued Jewish philosophy and mussar privately, and at a young age had completed the entire works of the Maharal, Kuzari, Mesilas Yeshorim, and works of chassidus. He avidly studied the works of Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch in the original German. He saw Rav Hirsch as his ideal because Hirsch had successfully devised a religious Jewish weltanschauung that could stand up to the challenges of modernity. (Nothing showed his diverse interests more than the fact that he spent his entire wedding dowry on buying a set of Zev Yaavetz's history books.)
Although Rav Shraga Feivel appeared an unassuming young man, he had a rare strain of boundless idealism running through his fabric. When he came across the statement in the gemora that, "Were Israel to keep two Shabbosim in a row, the Redemption would immediately come" he promised himself then and there that he would work to draw the hearts of Jews back to their Father in Heaven.
In the early years of the twentieth century, when Jews all over the world were blindly rushing to embrace enlightenment, communism, socialism and every other "ism" besides their ancestral heritage, his dream appeared as unpractical, wishful thinking.
At age 22 he married, and settled near his father's home in the town of Humina. In 1913, he decided to leave for the U.S. for reasons never clearly defined by him. Before he left, he received a brocho from Rav Yeshaya of Krestira, who foretold that he would accomplish great things in America.
The first few years in the U.S. Rav Shraga Feivel spent trying his hand at different professions. Although an expert at the laws of shechita, he saw after a day that this profession did not suit him. He taught in talmud Torahs in New York, Bridgeport and Scranton, before he returned to New York and opened an ice cream business.
Although he still dreamed of opening a yeshiva, he had discovered that in the U.S., all the power was concentrated in the hands of a talmud Torah's president and board of directors, and the principal and teachers were viewed as merely low level servants. He dreamed of succeeding in his business and with the funds, opening his own yeshiva. However, his business was not succeeding as planned, possibly because his head was more in his Torah studies than in ice cream.
Kashruth and educating the public
Rav Shraga Feivel was a lover of Jewish liturgical music; he and chazzan Yossele Rosenblatt became friends and together created The Jewish Light (Dos Yiddishe Licht) newspaper. The intent was to inform the Jewish public about the awareness of their heritage, shmiras hamitzvas, the importance of keeping the kashruth laws; and they wanted to give their secular brothers an alternative to The Forward (and The Workmen's Circle/Bund). He was way ahead of his times; the public was not interested for the most part in their message, and the paper folded leaving them deep in debt.
Rav Shraga Feivel, realizing that his business enterprises were failing, in the summer of 1921, after being pursued by various members of the board, he finally agreed to take a teaching job at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, which at the time was a "talmud Torah" rather than a yeshiva. Many of the teachers were not shomrei Torah and mitzvos, a very sore spot in the side of Rav Shraga Feivel, and added to his hesitancy of joining the school. He was certain that the Torah could only be learned, if taught by frum teachers. A series of illnesses that struck him didn't allow him to take the job until Elul 1923, when he was appointed to teach the eighth grade class.
Rav Nesanel Quinn, a student who had arrived the year before and later became principal of Jewish studies in the yeshiva, recounts, "In the first days after he came to the yeshiva, even the worst students began to feel more positive about their Jewish studies. He tried -- and succeeded -- in making Torah study beloved to them, and in giving them the feeling of closeness to Hashem. They began to keep mitzvos not out of habit but out of deep feeling. He imbued one with pride to study Torah, and that nothing in this world could compare to Torah study."
The Yeshiva Leaps Spiritually
The board hired Reb Shraga Feivel for just six months on a trial basis instead of a year, as they had done with all the previous principals, and if they weren't satisfied, they could fire him. To their surprise, Reb Shraga Feivel told them that he wasn't even interested in a six-month contract. He offered that they could hire him on the basis that if at any point they were dissatisfied, they could fire him on the spot. All the previous principals had insisted on a detailed contract for an entire year.
Rav Shraga Feivel began the next day. He found a group of cool, impassive teachers whose resentment of him bristled under the surface. The teachers too were all of Polish or Russian extraction, and they could not respect the Hungarian man who "lacked up-to-date scholastic and educational training" and proudly sported a beard and payos.
But as the following weeks unfolded, and each teacher had the occasion to meet and discuss topics with him, they soon stood open-mouthed before Rav Shraga Feivel's vast knowledge. The teacher who was expert in Hebrew grammar soon discovered that Rav Shraga Feivel was a giant in dikduk. The teacher whose specialty was Jewish history soon discovered that Rav Shraga Feivel knew far more than he.
Within a few weeks, the entire staff was united in their reverence and respect for the new principal who each admitted towered far above him. Rav Shraga Feivel began his innovative program right away.
On his first day as principal, Rav Shraga Feivel dictated a letter to the members of the board. He wrote them that a person cannot be balabos (board member) over a yeshiva unless he appreciates Torah. He demanded that every one of them attend a Torah shiur at least twice a week. The board members were astonished -- but they complied.
Rav Shraga Feivel gave a shiur in the home of Reb Benzion Weberman where he impressed the committee members with his deep religious, educational and personal ideals. They began to understand that it wasn't sufficient for a child to have a Jewish education only until his bar mitzva years, which was the standard in America until then.
In addition to winning over the rebbes and the parents, Rav Shraga Feivel soon was idolized by the students. They had never seen a principal who taught with such heart and neshomoh. On holidays he made assemblies and parties, and would dance with the students. He would sing soulful songs "Kadsheinu" and "Vetaheir libeinu" with such ecstasy that all the students were swept up with the same emotion.
"It isn't the slightest exaggeration to say that Rav Shraga Feivel blew a new soul into us, of a natural Jewish approach to our Torah. We could clearly sense how the Shechina was present in every class. A new spirit blew in the life of the yeshiva -- and all this he did quietly, without noise, without giving orders."
Torah Vodaath's name began to spread far and wide in New York. There was no longer any need to recruit bochurim for the yeshiva and the problem now became how to find enough room for all the boys. The crowding forced the committee to open classes in rented apartments around the district. Classes were held in the Keap Street beis hamedrash, the Lincoln business school, and the Beis Aaron shtiebel on Division Avenue. At the same time, the spiritual growth fostered by Rav Shraga Feivel kept pace with the physical growth of the yeshiva.
The Mesivta is Founded
The idea of a Jewish high school was still far-fetched. When the end of the year drew near, Rav Shraga Feivel persuaded the parents of the eighth-grade boys to keep their sons in the yeshiva for "just one more year." Rav Shraga Feivel arranged for the youths to study in a local high school at night where courses were offered for adults who had not completed their high school diploma. He knew such a school would have less of an influence on his students than learning in a public school with youth their age. Besides the hours at night devoted to secular studies, the boys studied Jewish studies from early in the morning and even late at night after they finished their secular studies.
When the end of the year came around again, Rav Shraga Feivel convinced the parents to agree to just one more year. And when that year finished, the parents were willing to agree to another year. At that point, he found himself with a group of high school youths whose dedication to Torah study remained strong and unswerving.
Says Rav Nesanel Quinn, one of the students of this group, "Our study day was long and exhausting, but Rav Shraga Feivel pushed us to study Torah additional hours, on our own initiative, as it were, until late at night. I remember that he sat and studied Torah with us every Thursday night until almost midnight, and we felt that Torah study was so sweet that we almost didn't feel tired. Our load of studies was not easy, particularly if you compared it to the study program in a public school. But none of us ever complained. The frequent recesses of course helped to release the tension, but mainly what helped was that in our society, everyone was working hard and no one had it easy. So the heavy load on us wasn't viewed as anything extraordinary. We were so busy with our studies that we virtually had no time to spend on small talk."
When Rav Shraga Feivel was ready to implement his next educational endeavor -- the Mesivta -- he already had a group of older boys who had spent 12 years in intense Jewish education and the idea of continuing Jewish studies after elementary school was becoming more palatable.
When Rav Shraga Feivel asked to open a full high school division, with structured Jewish and secular studies offered within the format of the school in 1927, his request met with resistance from the board. The board, truth to tell, had nobly maintained the elementary school through unflagging and exhaustive efforts, but to undertake the support of a high school on top of that was a burden that the members saw as overwhelmingly difficult and perhaps unjustified.
Mr. Avrohom Lewin, a board member backed Rav Shraga Feivel. Despite the failure of Mr. Lewin's business during the growing Depression that hit America in those years, he staunchly agreed to buy a building at 505 Bedford Avenue for the Mesivta (as Rav Shraga Feivel called the high school to differentiate it from the elementary school, which was called "the yeshiva").
Shortly after Mr. Lewin purchased it, taking out large loans in his name, a real estate agent offered to buy it back from him at a much higher price -- that would have landed him a profit equal to three years of livelihood. But Mr. Lewin passed the difficult trial, and made the building available to the yeshiva. Eventually, the committee board agreed to take the Mesivta under its wing and pay for its cost. However, the burden of running and maintaining it fell upon Rav Shraga Feivel.
It must be emphasized what an immense achievement this was. Not only had Yeshiva Torah Vodaath acquired a sterling name as a yeshiva with undiluted Torah values, but it was the only yeshiva at the time with an excellent high school program accredited by the New York State Board of Regents. The other yeshiva schools, such as Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef, Rav Shlomo Kluger and Tiferes Yerushalayim, were only elementary schools with at best afternoon programs for public high school students.
Rav Shraga Feivel's concept of the Mesivta program had no parallel in any yeshiva in the world -- and not just because he incorporated secular studies and a high school degree into the yeshiva. This in itself was an act of genius. He understood that for American Jewry to flourish, yeshiva boys must have a secular education. He insisted that his talmidim excel in the secular program as well. When he asked the European gedolim about the issue of secular studies in the yeshiva, the only shaila was could it be housed in the same building as used for limudei kodesh.(There were fanatics on the board, that insisted the yeshiva change its name from Torah Vodaath to a name that did not imply that there was daas outside of Torah. He strongly disagreed with that premise, as did Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Rambam/Maimonides).
Besides gemora being taught on a high level, he insisted that the curriculum include Chumash and Novi with their commentaries, the meanings of the prayers, knowledge of the 613 mitzvos, Jewish law, and sifrei yirah and mussar such as Sha'arei Teshuvah, Mesilas Yeshorim, and for select students, even Doros Harishonim, the detailed Jewish history book written by Rav Y. Halevi. Many of the latter courses he personally taught. He saw the utter importance of giving his students a solid foundation in Jewish faith and hashkofo that was taken for granted in the European yeshivos.
The atmosphere of the yeshiva was an unusual mix of Litvish learning taught by great Litvish scholars some of whom he brought over from Europe, with chassidic enthusiasm and soul which he himself injected. He integrated different approaches from various groups in Klal Yisroel and knew how to create a harmonious synthesis that appealed to his American students.
Although his influence permeated the yeshiva and every student in it, he humbly kept himself to the sidelines and refused to accept the title of "Rosh Mesivta" or even the more routine title of "Rabbi." He could not be found at the Mizrach of the beis hamedrash during prayers. He was the hinge on which the entire yeshiva turned, but to the unknowing eye, he seemed just an unassuming person filling a nondescript role. Who had ever heard of a man who built an entire yeshiva with mesiras nefesh -- only to refuse to take the mantle of honor it would bequeath to him?
In the shiurim Rav Shraga Feivel gave to the classes of the Mesivta he spoke constantly of Eretz Yisroel and the negative effect of college (he later altered his opinion, and asked Rabbi Hutner to apply for a college charter from New York State, under changing circumstances and an evolving necessity for many talmidim). Had he lived, a college would have been built under the auspices of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath.
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE:
Courtesy of the Mendlowitz Family Archives and Philip Fishman
In one shiur, to the astonished eyes of his students who didn't know if he was hallucinating or really meant it, he said that the day would come when he would found a kollel avreichim for them to continue their studies in Eretz Yisroel after their weddings. No one in their wildest dreams at the time even considered continuing their Torah studies after their weddings. Each student felt that his hands were full with just remaining in yeshiva for high school despite the disapproval of his parents, the mockery of his neighbors, the haughty looks of his more Americanized friends, and the spirit of materialism and heresy that blew in powerful gusts all around him.
The Mesivta grew, and Rav Shraga Feivel realized his dream of creating knowledgeable, deeply religious and committed Jews. Years later, he created Beis Midrash Elyon in an "unknown" town called Monsey near Spring Valley, where hand-picked married students engaged in high-level Jewish studies and where Torah students went in the summer for a combined program of summer relaxation and Torah study. This was the first kollel of its kind in the United States.
Wellsprings of the Mesivta
Rav Shraga Feivel created soldiers who went forth to Jewish communities outside of New York and founded yeshivas and saved the remnant of religious Jews from going lost. He sent students to found new yeshivos: Lakewood, Telz, and the Nitra Yeshiva, and he gave up his own sorely-needed supporters instructing them to help support new yeshivos that were opening up elsewhere. He founded Beis Midrash Elyon, for advanced Torah study at a kollel level. One of his greatest dreams came to fruition when Torah Umesorah, whose goal was to create day schools and yeshivos all over the world, was founded.
By the time Rav Shraga Feivel passed away in 1948, American religious Jewry was still small and tender, but had deep and strong roots. Yeshivas Torah Vodaath had sprouted numerous rabbis and activists that helped create the prominent religious Jewish communities that we see today spread out throughout the U.S. and Canada.
With the mighty personality of Rav Shlomo Heiman, the rosh yeshiva who taught the older bochurim of the Mesivta from the years 1933-1943, Rav Shraga Feivel produced the first team of Torah scholars of stature on American soil, all of whom had incubated in the classrooms of Torah Vodaath. They continued to reinvigorate Jewish religious life around the globe throughout the twentieth century.
The fabric of the American Jewish community began to change in the 1950s. The flood of survivors and the local religious community opened new yeshivos, the religious community burgeoned, a new religious-American weltanschauung developed which enabled a religious Jew to face American society with confidence and independence.
His love for his fellow Jew was expressed best by Rabbi Weissmandel in his book "The Unheeded Cry." "(Paraphrased) There was no rabbi in the U.S.A. that cared for the plight of European Jewry more than the saintly Rav Shraga Feivel, and helped greatly in the fundraising and hatzoloh efforts to save every Jew possible."
Rav Shraga Feivel took seriously ill in 1948. He was an ardent Zionist; he urged his son in-law, Rabbi Alexander Linchner, to go to Israel and save the Sephardi children from secularism. Boys Town Jerusalem was established in 1948, the largest yeshiva/trade school of its kind anywhere in the world.
He asked that he be buried in a non-monumented grave in the Arugas Habosem cemetery on Long Island until the situation in Israel would enable his burial there. He was laid to rest in his final resting place in Bnei Brak. Rav Eliyahu Dessler zt"l, in his will, requested that he be buried next to Rav Shraga Feivel. Until this day, the Kehillas Arugas Habosem has left his original grave empty.
It is not an exaggeration to say that there was no man that impacted the American Jewish landscape with such purpose, clarity of thought, and vision, as the saintly Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, zecher tzaddik v'kadosh levracha.
(Much of the material was taken from Shlucha DeRachmana (written in Hebrew) by R' Aaron Suraski who interviewed many family members. Mr. M. Samsonowitz gathered and had written much of the material. Although this piece had other important figures mentioned in the establishment of the American yeshiva movement, upon extensive research, I had discovered that they were greatly exaggerated to the point of being fabricated, and could not at all discern the true from the false, so I eliminated that material entirely. The above edited piece, is accurate, although not the entire story.)
Boys Town Jerusalem Nine Acre Campus in the Bayit Vegan Section of Jerusalem
Rabbi Alexander Linchner zt"l
The pieces
were beginning to fit together. And the most extraordinary part of the
story is that Mendlowitz understood the architecture while much of it
still existed only in his imagination.
Yet his vision was never confined to America. This is where the story takes a remarkable turn.
Mendlowitz
did not see the Jewish future as a choice between America and Eretz
Israel. He understood that the Jewish people were rebuilding
simultaneously in multiple centers. America was becoming a major center
of Torah life, while the Land of Israel was emerging as the center of
Jewish national sovereignty. If Jewish education was the foundation of
Jewish survival in America, it would be no less important on the
emerging frontier of the Jewish state.
And
here the story leads directly to Rabbi Alexander S. Linchner. Linchner
was born and raised in America, studied in the great European yeshivot
before the Holocaust, and later became principal of Yeshiva Torah
Vodaath, working under the guidance of his father-in-law, Rabbi Shraga
Feivel Mendlowitz. Linchner would become the founder of Boys Town
Jerusalem, (https://boystownjerusalem.org/ )carrying an important part of Mendlowitz's educational philosophy from Brooklyn to the emerging State of Israel.
The
connection is therefore not incidental. It is generational. Mendlowitz
had spent his life building an educational infrastructure for Jewish
survival in America. Linchner carried that educational inheritance into
the newly established State of Israel. The story of Boys Town Jerusalem
begins in the extraordinary chaos of Israel's earliest years. The new
state absorbed immigrants from countries and cultures across the Jewish
world. Holocaust survivors arrived with almost nothing. Jews came from
Yemen, North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The country
desperately needed educated young people who could build a modern
society.
The
challenge was not merely to provide food and shelter. It was to create
human capital. Boys Town Jerusalem was founded in 1948 by Rabbi
Alexander S. Linchner to provide education, support, values, and
practical skills to young immigrants and disadvantaged youth. Its
educational philosophy connected Torah values with academic, vocational,
and technological education. The goal was not simply to preserve Jewish
identity, but to equip young Jews to become productive builders of the
Jewish state.
This
was Jewish education entering a new frontier. The American day school
had answered one question: How can a Jew remain Jewish in a free and
prosperous Diaspora? Boys Town Jerusalem addressed another: How can a
young Jewish state transform impoverished and displaced children into
citizens capable of building a country? The answers were different, but
the philosophy was remarkably similar. Education. Not charity alone. Not
ideology alone. Not religious instruction disconnected from practical
life. Education as empowerment. Education as dignity. Education as
national reconstruction.
That
is why Boys Town Jerusalem belongs in the larger story of Rabbi
Mendlowitz's vision, even though Rabbi Alexander Linchner was its
founder. Linchner's achievement was his own, but the institution also
reflected the educational philosophy he had absorbed from his
father-in-law. Accounts of the institution's history describe
Mendlowitz's final charge to Linchner to do something for the education
of children in Eretz Israel. Linchner answered that charge by building
an institution that combined Jewish values with academic and
technological education.
The
symbolism is almost too perfect. Mendlowitz spent his life asking how
Torah could survive in America. His final vision looked toward Israel
and asked how Torah education could help build a Jewish state. The
answer in both places was the same in its deepest sense: educate the
child.
This
was not merely a religious proposition. It was a proposition about
civilization. A civilization survives when it can reproduce its
knowledge. A nation survives when it can educate its young. A people
survives when it can transmit memory without becoming imprisoned by the
past. And a religious tradition survives when its children can
understand why its inheritance remains meaningful in the present.
That
is what Mendlowitz understood. His American vision was therefore far
more sophisticated than the caricature of a rabbi attempting merely to
preserve a disappearing European world. He was not simply preserving
Europe. He was constructing something new. He took the intellectual
seriousness of the European yeshiva and placed it inside an American
framework. He understood the American appetite for education and used it
rather than fighting it. He recognized that American parents wanted
their children to succeed professionally and sought to ensure that
Jewish education would not be presented as the enemy of that ambition.
He understood that a successful Jewish community needed leaders,
professionals, educators, businessmen, and scholars. And he understood
that all of them needed roots.
This
may explain why his influence reached far beyond the institutions he
directly led. Torah Vodaath became a model. Torah Umesorah became a
national mechanism. The day school movement became a communal norm. And
the educational philosophy carried by his students and family eventually
crossed into the developing State of Israel.
The
post-Holocaust Jewish recovery was therefore not simply a return from
destruction. It was a transformation of the Jewish educational
imagination. The old question had been: How do we keep Judaism alive?
The new question became: How do we build institutions so strong that
Judaism can flourish? That is a radically different question. It moves
the Jew from defense to construction.
And that is perhaps Mendlowitz's greatest legacy.
He
understood that the American Jew did not need to choose between being
American and being Jewish. He needed to be educated enough to know what
each meant. He understood that the Land of Israel did not need only
immigrants and idealists. It needed educated young people capable of
building the technological, economic, intellectual, and moral
infrastructure of a sovereign Jewish state.
In
America, Jewish education became the defense against assimilation. In
Israel, Jewish education became part of the construction of sovereignty.
In both places, the child stood at the center.
That
is why the story of Torah Vodaath, Torah Umesorah, and Boys Town
Jerusalem should not be treated as three separate institutional
histories. They are chapters in one larger story. Torah Vodaath
represented the laboratory. Torah Umesorah represented the expansion.
Boys Town Jerusalem represented the frontier. And Rabbi Shraga Feivel
Mendlowitz stood at the conceptual crossroads.
He
understood that the Jewish future would not be secured by mourning the
world that had disappeared. It would be secured by educating the
children who would build the world that had not yet arrived.
The
post-Holocaust Jew therefore inherited two obligations. The first was
remembrance. The second was construction. Remember the six million, but
educate the millions who came after them. Remember the destroyed
yeshivot, but build new ones. Remember the teachers who were murdered,
but train new teachers. Remember the communities that vanished, but
build communities where Jewish children can grow.
This is where the Jewish recovery becomes more than a historical episode. It becomes a philosophy of Jewish survival.
The
American experience also teaches another lesson that Mendlowitz
understood with unusual clarity. Jewish survival in a free society
cannot depend upon persecution to keep Jews Jewish. In fact, it must do
precisely the opposite. The Jew must be taught to choose Jewish life
when nobody is forcing him to do so. Torah must become compelling
because it is understood, lived, studied, and transmitted, not because
the outside world has made Jewish identity unavoidable.
That
may be the greatest educational challenge of the American Diaspora. The
enemy is not always the pogromist at the gate. Sometimes it is the
comfortable world that asks no questions at all. Sometimes assimilation
comes not through hostility but through indifference. Sometimes the most
dangerous sentence a Jewish child can hear is not "You cannot be
Jewish," but "It does not really matter."
Mendlowitz's answer was that it matters enormously, but the child must be educated to understand why.
That
is the difference between inherited identity and lived identity. One
can be born Jewish and remain culturally Jewish through family
sentiment. But a serious Jewish civilization requires knowledge. It
requires literacy. It requires teachers. It requires institutions. Above
all, it requires children who know enough about their inheritance to
make it their own.
The
post-Holocaust generation understood this with extraordinary urgency.
The survivors had watched a civilization disappear. The builders
therefore refused to leave the future to chance. They built schools.
They built yeshivot. They built day-school networks. They built
educational institutions in America. They built educational institutions
in Israel. They rebuilt the chain.
And
Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz understood something that remains as
relevant today as it was when he first confronted the American Jewish
problem: the greatest threat to Jewish continuity is not always the
enemy who wants to destroy the Jew. Sometimes it is the comfortable
society that makes the Jew forget why he should remain Jewish.
Against
that danger, there is one lasting answer: education. Not education as
mere indoctrination, but education as knowledge. Education as memory.
Education as intellectual seriousness. Education as the transmission of a
civilization. Education as the confidence to engage the modern world
without surrendering the Jewish world.
That was the Mendlowitz vision.
It
began with Torah Vodaath and Bais Medrash Elyon. It expanded through
Torah Umesorah. It reached toward Eretz Israel. Through Rabbi Alexander
Linchner and the founding of Boys Town Jerusalem, it became part of the
educational rebuilding of the Jewish state itself.
The
Nazis sought to make the Jewish child the last link in Jewish history.
Mendlowitz devoted his life to making that child the next link. That is
the difference between survival and recovery. Survival says: We are
still here. Recovery says: We are building what comes next. And
education is where the next chapter begins.
Beth Medrash Elyon in the early 1940s - Mendlowitz Family Archives
Beth Medrash Elyon: Looking at Monsey today, it's hard to imagine it all started with one yeshiva:Watch Video Cliphttps://fb.watch/IVNFRJ6T8p/
The Post-Holocaust Jew and the Jewish Recovery, Continued...
Part four in a series of five, in commemoration of his yahrzeit the third day of Elul
There was another dimension to Rabbi Mendlowitz's educational vision that is sometimes lost when his legacy is reduced to Torah Vodaath and Torah Umesorah. He understood that a Jewish educational revolution could not end when a student graduated from high school. If Jewish education was to become the foundation of Jewish survival in America, there had to be a place where young men could continue serious Torah study after their secondary education and, just as importantly, where future teachers and communal leaders could be prepared for the responsibilities of building Jewish life in America. This conviction led to one of Mendlowitz's most visionary undertakings, Beth Medrash Elyon.
In 1943, Mendlowitz purchased a substantial tract of land in Monsey, (the William Heidgerd residential estate and its active farm outbuildings historically spanned roughly 24 to 28 acres), then a largely undeveloped and decidedly non-Jewish area, with the intention of creating an institution that would raise the educational level of Torah teachers. The first institution established there was Aish Dos, a teachers' institute whose very name, "Pillar of Fire," expressed the mission. The idea was daring. Why build a Torah institution in a place where there was scarcely a Jewish community? Because Mendlowitz was not merely reacting to existing Jewish geography. He was creating the geography of the Jewish future. In 1944, the institution was reorganized as Beth Medrash Elyon. It became one of America's earliest post-graduate yeshivot and an important center for advanced Torah learning.
The significance of Beth Medrash Elyon goes well beyond the walls of the institution itself. Mendlowitz understood that schools cannot exist without teachers, communities cannot exist without leaders, and a Torah civilization cannot reproduce itself without scholars capable of transmitting its intellectual tradition. The creation of Beth Medrash Elyon was therefore the logical next step in his educational architecture. Torah Vodaath could educate the child. A national day-school movement could bring Jewish education to communities across America. But where would the teachers come from? Where would the next generation of Torah educators be trained? Where would young men develop the depth of learning necessary to become the intellectual leadership of a growing American Jewish community? Beth Medrash Elyon was part of Mendlowitz's answer.
This is why describing Beth Medrash Elyon simply as a "post-graduate yeshiva" understates its historical significance. Mendlowitz was attempting to create an American Torah elite that would not merely preserve European scholarship but would transmit it into a new environment. He understood that the American Jewish community could not indefinitely depend upon importing rabbis and teachers from Europe. The future required Americans educated to the highest levels of Torah who understood the realities of American Jewish life. The institution was designed to help produce precisely that kind of leadership.
There was also something characteristically Mendlowitzian about the location. Monsey was not yet the Orthodox Jewish center that subsequent generations would know. His decision to establish Beth Medrash Elyon there reflected the same instinct that would later shape the growth of Orthodox communities throughout the region. He was willing to invest in Jewish infrastructure before the Jewish population existed in sufficient numbers to make the investment seem obvious. He understood that institutions could create communities just as communities created institutions. The vision came first; the population followed. Later, Monsey would become one of the most significant centers of Orthodox Jewish life in America, but Mendlowitz was thinking in terms of that future when the landscape still looked remarkably different.
Beth Medrash Elyon also reveals something essential about Mendlowitz's understanding of American Jewish psychology. He knew that American Jews respected education. America was becoming a society in which education was increasingly associated with advancement, professional achievement, and social mobility. Rather than treating that American instinct as a threat, Mendlowitz harnessed it. His answer was, in effect, to say that the Jewish community must become equally serious about Jewish education. If America expected its children to pursue higher education, Jewish society had to create institutions in which the highest levels of Torah scholarship were equally imaginable and equally attainable.
The genius was in refusing to present Torah and education as competing concepts. Torah itself was education. Torah scholarship was intellectual achievement. The yeshiva was not an escape from intellectual life. It was an institution of intellectual life. Mendlowitz wanted American Jews to understand that serious Jewish learning belonged among the highest aspirations of an educated person.
That philosophy also explains why Beth Medrash Elyon belongs in the same historical narrative as Torah Umesorah. These were not unrelated projects. They were different components of one educational system. One institution addressed the creation of advanced Torah leadership. The other addressed the creation of a broad educational network. Together they reflected Mendlowitz's understanding that Jewish continuity requires both depth and breadth. A civilization cannot survive on mass education without scholars, but neither can it survive on scholars without an educated population capable of sustaining them.
The sequence is therefore revealing. Torah Vodaath represented the development of a serious American yeshiva. Beth Medrash Elyon represented the creation of an advanced level of Torah scholarship and teacher formation. Torah Umesorah represented the expansion of Jewish education into communities throughout America. Each answered a different part of the same question: How can Torah become a permanent feature of American Jewish civilization rather than a fragile remnant of European Jewish life?
Mendlowitz's answer was institutional rather than rhetorical. Build the elementary school. Build the high school. Build the advanced yeshiva. Train teachers. Create communities. Establish a national educational organization. Develop the infrastructure necessary for Jewish children to encounter Torah at every stage of life. He was constructing an educational ecosystem decades before the language of "systems" and "networks" became fashionable in organizational thinking.
There is another reason Beth Medrash Elyon deserves a central place in the story of the post-Holocaust Jew. Mendlowitz understood that the Holocaust had created a catastrophic vacuum in Jewish leadership. Europe had not merely lost millions of Jews. It had lost generations of teachers and scholars. If America was going to become a major center of Torah life, it would need to produce its own leadership. The answer could not be perpetual nostalgia for the great European yeshivot. The answer was to create American institutions capable of producing scholars of comparable seriousness.
That was an audacious proposition. And it worked.
Beth Medrash Elyon became associated with major Torah scholars and educators, including Rabbi Reuven Grozovsky. Its graduates and students included figures who would become influential in American Orthodox scholarship and communal life. The institution thereby became part of the emerging infrastructure of postwar American Torah leadership.
Seen from the perspective of the twenty-first century, the achievement can almost seem inevitable. It was anything but inevitable. There was no guarantee that an American-born Orthodox community would produce a sustainable scholarly elite. There was no guarantee that parents would send their children to full-time Jewish schools. There was no guarantee that day schools would spread beyond a handful of communities. There was no guarantee that serious Torah learning would flourish in a country whose economic and cultural incentives pointed so powerfully toward assimilation.
Mendlowitz did not wait for guarantees. He built.
That word may ultimately be the best description of his career. He built institutions before the need was universally recognized. He built in places where others saw empty land. He built educational systems when others saw isolated schools. He built advanced Torah institutions when others questioned whether American Jewry could sustain them. And he built with the assumption that the future would belong to those who educated the next generation rather than those who merely complained about the decline of the previous one.
Beth Medrash Elyon therefore belongs at the center of the Mendlowitz story. It demonstrates that his vision was never simply to preserve Orthodoxy. His objective was to create an American Torah civilization capable of reproducing itself.
That distinction is enormous. Preservation looks backward. Mendlowitz was looking forward.
He was not asking how to keep alive the Judaism of the old country for another generation. He was asking what institutions would be necessary for Judaism to flourish in a new country, under new economic conditions, within a new culture, and among children who would think and speak differently from their grandparents.
The answer required a complete educational architecture: Torah Vodaath for foundational formation, Beth Medrash Elyon for advanced Torah scholarship and leadership, Torah Umesorah for the expansion of day-school education, and ultimately a new educational frontier in Eretz Israel.
The pieces were beginning to fit together. And the most extraordinary part of the story is that Mendlowitz understood the architecture while much of it still existed only in his imagination.
Yet his vision was never confined to America. This is where the story takes a remarkable turn.
The Post-Holocaust Jew and the Jewish Recovery Continued…
Photo Courtesy Of The Mendlowitz Family Archives – The Original Mesifta Torah Vodaath in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(Part Three In a Series of Five, in commemoration of his Yahrzeit on the Third of Elul)
The great Jewish recovery after the Holocaust cannot be
understood merely as a story of survival. Survival is too small a word.
Six million Jews were murdered, hundreds of communities were erased, and
an entire intellectual and spiritual civilization was devastated. What
emerged afterward was something far more consequential than the
rebuilding of institutions. The Jewish people began reconstructing the
machinery by which a civilization transmits itself from one generation
to another. At the center of that reconstruction stood an institution
that the Nazis understood only too well and that Jewish leaders
understood even more profoundly: the school.
The Holocaust had demonstrated what happens when a civilization’s
institutions are destroyed. The post-Holocaust generation therefore
faced a question more profound than where Jews would live. The question
was how Jewish children would become Jews. The answer would determine
whether the next generation inherited merely the memory of European
Jewry or inherited its intellectual and spiritual legacy. Few American
Jewish leaders understood that problem as early or as deeply as Rabbi
Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. He died in 1948, before the full dimensions of
the postwar Jewish recovery could be seen, yet his fingerprints were
already on the architecture of that recovery. He had spent the preceding
decades confronting a problem that would become one of the defining
questions of modern Jewish history: How does a people preserve an
ancient religious civilization inside a modern, free, prosperous,
individualistic society?
Mendlowitz understood something that is easy to miss when looking
backward at American Orthodoxy. America was not simply another
Diaspora. It was a radically different environment for Jewish survival.
In Eastern Europe, the Jew was often reminded of his Jewishness by the
world around him. In America, the Jew could forget it. That difference
changed everything. The European Jew could be oppressed by his
surroundings. The American Jew could be absorbed by them. The European
Jew faced exclusion. The American Jew faced inclusion so complete that
Judaism itself could become unnecessary to his social identity. The
European Jewish community was frequently held together by geography,
language, custom, and external hostility. America offered mobility,
opportunity, education, prosperity, and religious freedom. These were
extraordinary blessings. They were also a new test.
The American Jew did not necessarily have to abandon Judaism in
anger. He could simply become American first and Jewish second, then
American exclusively. His children could speak better English than their
parents, attend the finest universities, enter the professions, marry
outside the community, and gradually lose the knowledge that once
connected them to generations of Jewish history. Mendlowitz saw that
assimilation in America would not necessarily look like rebellion. It
could look like success. That was the genius of his educational vision.
He did not propose to defeat America. He sought to teach Jews how to
live in America without disappearing into it.
His career illustrates the seriousness of that mission. After
arriving in America in 1913, Mendlowitz taught in several Jewish
educational settings and eventually moved to Brooklyn. His ambitions
were far larger than the institutions available to him. He wanted to
build a serious yeshiva in America, but he also understood that American
Jewish life required something more than importing European forms. He
became the leader and founder of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath which at the time
was a tiny Talmud-Torah type school with 22 boys, and beginning in the
early 1920s, transformed it into one of the foundational institutions of
American Orthodox Judaism approved by the New York State Board of
Regents as a recognized high school. Torah Vodaath was not simply a
yeshiva. It was an experiment in whether Torah could become an American
intellectual and communal force.
What made his approach distinctive was his understanding of the
American child. He knew that the Jewish boy growing up in Brooklyn was
not a child in Vilna transplanted geographically. He was an American. He
would encounter American science, American literature, American
economics, American politics, American popular culture, and the American
ideal of individual achievement. A Jewish educational system that
pretended otherwise would eventually lose the very children it was
trying to protect. The answer, therefore, could not be isolation. It had
to be education strong enough to withstand engagement. The child needed
to know enough Torah to understand that Jewish identity was not an
embarrassment, an ethnic curiosity, or an inherited inconvenience. It
was an intellectual and spiritual civilization worthy of serious
commitment.
This was the revolution that Torah Vodaath represented. It
demonstrated that the yeshiva did not have to remain a European
institution operating temporarily in America. It could become an
American Jewish institution while remaining authentically rooted in
Torah. Mendlowitz understood that American Jews could not be educated
exclusively through fear. They could not be told that the surrounding
society was inherently corrupt and that Jewish survival required
permanent withdrawal from American life. Such an approach misunderstood
the American Jew. The American Jew wanted to succeed. He wanted
education. He wanted economic independence. He wanted his children to
enter the professions. He wanted to participate in the extraordinary
experiment that was the United States. A Jewish educational system that
ignored those aspirations would eventually lose the children it intended
to protect.
Mendlowitz therefore pursued a more sophisticated strategy: build
Jews who could enter America without being swallowed by America. That
required confidence. It required Jewish children to know that Torah was
not an obstacle to intellectual achievement, but a source of
intellectual discipline. It required parents to understand that Jewish
education was not an alternative to preparing children for American
life. It was the foundation upon which Jewish children could enter that
life with a sense of identity and responsibility.
Yet Mendlowitz understood the limitations of institutional
success. One great yeshiva could educate hundreds or even thousands of
students. It could not educate an entire Jewish population. The problem
of Jewish continuity was therefore much larger than Torah Vodaath. If
the American Jewish future depended upon education, then education had
to reach beyond the traditional yeshiva population. It had to reach
communities that did not yet have strong Torah institutions. It had to
reach parents who wanted a Jewish education for their children but did
not know how to create one. It had to reach cities where Orthodox Jewish
infrastructure barely existed.
The question therefore became national: How do you build Jewish
education across an entire country? The answer was Torah Umesorah (https://www.torahumesorah.org/).
Mendlowitz was the founder of Torah Umesorah in 1944. The organization
was conceived as a national educational infrastructure for Orthodox
Hebrew day schools, helping communities create and strengthen
institutions of Jewish education. This was a remarkable act of strategic
thinking. Mendlowitz was no longer simply building a school. He was
building a system capable of producing schools.
That distinction is enormous. A school educates children. An
educational movement changes the destiny of a community. Torah Umesorah
gave American Orthodoxy a mechanism through which the day-school model
could spread from one community to another. The postwar expansion of
Orthodox Jewish education would eventually create an extraordinary
network of schools across North America. What had once appeared to many
American Jews to be an imported European institution became a defining
feature of Orthodox American life.
The significance of this achievement cannot be measured merely by
enrollment statistics. The day school transformed the social
architecture of Jewish life. A school requires teachers. Teachers
require training. Families gather around schools. Families create
synagogues, youth organizations, charitable institutions, kosher
businesses, and neighborhoods. A school can therefore become the nucleus
around which an entire Jewish community forms. Mendlowitz understood
this before the phenomenon became obvious. He understood that Jewish
continuity is not maintained primarily by declarations of Jewish pride.
It is maintained by habits acquired during childhood.
A child who learns Torah every morning does not experience
Judaism as an extracurricular activity. A child who studies Jewish
history does not experience Jewish history as something belonging to
grandparents. A child who learns Hebrew encounters Jewish texts in their
original language rather than as artifacts translated into someone
else’s vocabulary. Education transforms inheritance into experience.
That was the revolution.
The Holocaust made the revolution morally urgent. European Jewry
had possessed extraordinary schools, yeshivot, scholars, rabbis, and
teachers. The Nazis destroyed much of that world with horrifying
efficiency. The postwar generation therefore understood that rebuilding
Jewish life required rebuilding the educational chain. But Mendlowitz
had already been thinking about this problem before the Holocaust
reached its final catastrophe. His vision was not reactive. It was
preventative. He believed American Jewry needed an educational
infrastructure strong enough to survive the temptations of prosperity
and assimilation even in the absence of persecution. In this sense, he
was preparing for the post-Holocaust world before the Holocaust was
over.
There is an extraordinary irony here. The Nazis believed that the
destruction of European Jewry would eliminate Jewish civilization. Yet
one of the most consequential responses to that destruction occurred in
America, where Jewish educators built a new educational infrastructure
on the ruins of the old one. The yeshiva crossed the Atlantic. The
teacher crossed the Atlantic. The Torah crossed the Atlantic. But
something else happened. The educational model itself evolved.
America forced Orthodox Judaism to become organizationally
sophisticated. The old European model had depended heavily on
established communities and centuries-old networks. America required
fundraising campaigns, boards, professional educators, school systems,
curricula, transportation, buildings, and national organizations. The
American Jew needed Torah, but the American Jewish community also needed
institutions capable of delivering Torah on an unprecedented scale.
Mendlowitz understood institutions. He understood people. And he
understood America. That combination made him the primary architect of
modern American Haredi Orthodoxy.
To Be Continued….
*
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