Yeshivot Lita: Pirke zikhronot (review)

The yeshiva has been an important part of the Jewish community for the last two millennia. Yet the yeshivot in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lithuania were special. The fact that so many important figures in the literary, scholarly, and even political arenas spent time in these yeshivot shows that there was a lot more to them than simply the advanced study of Talmud. That many of these yeshiva students even rejected Orthodoxy later in life is also a significant part of the story.

It wasn't until the 1995 publication of Shaul Stampfer's groundbreaking book¹ that study of the Lithuanian yeshiva as a cultural institution really took off. Recently we have seen the publication of Mordechai Breuer's massive work on the subject.² While Breuer focuses on the entire history of the yeshivot, he understandably devoted a great deal of space to Lithuania, which had a great flowering of yeshivot at the end of the nineteenth century. It was precisely when traditional Jewish life was being challenged that many of great yeshivot were opened. They were to be bastions of conservatism, the bulwark against irreligiosity, Haskalah, Zionism, and whatever new ideologies the winds blew in.

At the center of any study of these institutions are the memoirs written by former students. In fact, whereas in many areas of historical study memoirs are often used merely to add flavor to the historical record, when it comes to study of the yeshiva, the memoirs are the historical record. In other words, it would be impossible to write a history of the yeshivot without using memoir literature, which is the prime, and often almost the exclusive, source of information about the various yeshivot. Although in his introduction Etkes notes the historiographical problems of relying on the memoir literature, he asserts that this is not the place for extended discussion of this issue. I think this was an unfortunate decision, for what better place than in an introduction to a volume of memoirs to discuss the problem of their reliability? This is especially so since Orthodox historiography, of both the hagiographic and quasi-scholarly model, is gullible when it comes to memoirs of traditionalists.³ One can only hope that Etkes returns to address this significant issue.

This criticism aside, Etkes' lengthy introduction, which in large measure is based on the memoirs themselves, discusses many important issues such as the image of the yeshiva and rosh (or head of the) yeshiva in the eyes of the students, the study of Haskalah within the yeshiva, and student revolts in Volozhin and Telz. One whose only exposure to the yeshiva world is the contemporary one will certainly find these revolts very surprising. This is because the contemporary yeshiva world is distinguished by strong obedience to authority figures. Yet as the memoirs make clear, the yeshiva leadership in Lithuania, while certainly awe-inspiring, never had that type of authority over the student body.

Among the yeshivot which the memoirs focus on are Volozhin, Telz, Mir, Lida, Slobodka, and Novaredok. The memoirs are are authored by such well-known figures as Barukh Epstein, Isaac Nissenbaum, Micha Yosef Berdyczewski, Meir Bar-Ilan, Simhah Assaf, Ben Zion Dinur, Ephraim Deinard, Isser Yehudah Unteman, and Moshe Zilberg. The book also contains a Hebrew translation of Chime Grade's "My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner," which, although fictional, provides a beautiful portrayal of the mussar personality.

While the book is primarily of historical interest, it also helps in making sense of the current scene. For example, the memoirs illustrate the significant role of the rosh yeshiva in the life of the students. In earlier times, when the local rabbi was also the head of the yeshiva, everyone knew who the supreme religious authority was. But what do you do when you have both a communal rabbi and a rosh yeshiva? Where do your allegiances lie? Who is regarded as the supreme authority? This is a great problem in Orthodoxy today and goes back to the nineteenth-century Lithuanian yeshiva model whereby the yeshiva...