The Elul Zman

By: Larry Gordon

Two of our grandsons arrived in Israel this week to study Torah in Jerusalem for the year. In about a week, one of our granddaughters will also leave for Jerusalem to study in seminary for the year.

There are many turning points in a person’s life. This is one of those giant steps that a young man or woman can take in their education, and we hope and pray that they will have a year of tremendous growth and personal fulfillment.

My two grandsons, Dovid Hirsch and Nison Gordon, were born two weeks apart in 2007. Dovid was born on June 10th and Nison on July 1st. We became grandparents for the first time a half year earlier, when Tehila Franklin was born in December of 2006. She will be going to Israel on September 8th for her year in seminary, also in Jerusalem.

I was telling Esta the other day that if one of these trips to Israel had come to fruition over the last few months, I don’t think I’d have the mindset to go for Sukkot. After all, I already have tickets for Chanukah, considering that last year I missed my dad’s yahrzeit in Israel because of the bris milah of Aron Tzvi Gordon.

Now, with three kids studying Torah in Israel, it feels like a tide has turned and there has been a so-called “changing of the guard.” The kids left late Saturday night from JFK to Tel Aviv and arrived ten hours later, then spent the first few days getting acclimated to a new environment.

It’s only over the last 25 years or so that going to study in Israel became an imperative for both young men and women after high school. Not every yeshiva encourages their students to go, however. Some of the yeshivas prefer that their 18-year-olds stay close to home for a year or two before going to Eretz Yisrael. Not so with the young women. In most cases, the protocol is to immediately depart for Israel after high school and then return to the U.S. and from there head directly into the shidduch-maddening cycle.

For my part, I had more friends who made aliyah and joined the IDF than those who went to yeshiva in Israel. Some of them still live there today and have built great lives. My parents didn’t encourage me to go to yeshiva in Israel after high school. Actually, I had a conversation with my father once about attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem for my junior year in college. Nothing came of that either.

Don’t get the wrong idea about yeshiva in Israel. For the last hundred years or more, it was always a great thing for young men to do.

Here are two stories I remember about prominent people and the circumstances of their studying in Israel that are quite memorable. The first is about the well-known American Rabbi, Abraham Hecht, who served as the spiritual leader of Sephardic congregations in North America for more than 65 years. His family migrated to the U.S. in 1895. As a young man in 1939, he left New York with four other friends to study at one of the great European yeshivas. As it turns out, he and his friends arrived in Poland five days before Hitler’s Nazi troops moved into Poland. The five young men were forced to flee through several countries just ahead of the murderous invaders. Rabbi Hecht made it back to New York just a short while before the Jew-hating killers, yimach shemam, proceeded to launch the Holocaust.

About a decade or so ago, I met with the Modzitzer singing star, Ben Zion Shenker. I was doing a story on the evolution of his career in Jewish music. Shenker possessed a beautiful, melodious voice. Among the things he told me was that, in 1946, he attended the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem in pre-state Israel. Founded in 1815, the Mir Yeshiva fled Europe during the Holocaust, settled in Shanghai under miraculous circumstances, until finally taking its place as the largest yeshiva in the world, serving almost 10,000 students annually.

Shenker told me that to arrive in Jerusalem, he had to take a flight from New York to London, and then from London to Cairo. From Cairo, he travelled by bus to Jerusalem. That’s certainly an arduous way to get to study Torah at a yeshiva in Israel, and it makes one appreciate the safety, speed, and luxury that travelers enjoy today. The Elul zman has begun and talmud Torah k’neged kulam. 

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.