The Rebbe Zichrono Livracha

Building Torah in America

Arriving in America following a war in which he had lost most of his chassidim, a wife, a daughter, and most of his family, the Rebbe pronounced immediately that he was here for one purpose; to build Torah.

He was doubted, and even scoffed at, but he was undeterred.

With a small nucleus of talmidim, he established Yeshiva Karlin Stolin—which would become one of America’s most important Torah institutions, continuing to thrive and expand close to seventy years later.

Like his brother, the Rebbe understood the importance of focusing on the youth—seeing in them the future, and the hopes for rebuilding from the Churban of the Holocaust. The Rebbe was ill and weak, but he did not take his eyes off his precious yeshiva for a moment.

A special emphasis of the Rebbe—which remains such a strong feature of the yeshiva to this day—was his recruitment of Rebbeim and Roshei Yeshiva whose Torah scholarship would be matched by their Yiras Shomayim. And he would not compromise on either. His talmidim would be inculcated with the highest level of scholarship, while being imbued with a burning love for Hashem, for Torah, and for Yidden.

It has been seventy years since the Rebbe founded the yeshiva with utter mesirus nefesh, against all odds, but his presence and his influences are felt within the yeshiva every day, and his principles continue to guide the yeshiva’s every decision under the leadership of his illustrious descendants.