It’s well known that the Mir Yeshiva collectively and successfully escaped war torn Europe, being stranded first in Kobe, Japan, followed by a long exile in Shanghai, China. While mostly true, there were students who were unable for one reason or another to escape together with the yeshiva, and remained behind being martyred by the Nazis and their collaborators along with millions of their brethren. 

One of the prominent ones was Rav Yona Karpilov (Minsker). As a student of Rav Elchanan Wasserman and Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz, he arrived in Mir in 1926 as a budding scholar, and soon emerged as one of the closest students of the Mir mashgiach Rav Yerucham Levovitz, as well as one of the yeshiva’s leaders guiding many of the younger students. He was also part of a contingent who studied in Brisk under Rav Yitzchak Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav. Many theories have been presented as to why he didn’t succeed in obtaining one of the coveted Sugihara visas in the summer of 1940, but ultimately he was in Kovno the following summer and not in Shanghai with his friends. He was murdered by Lithuanian collaborators in 1941.

This episode is sponsored by the OU. Make your Tish B'Av more meaningful with the OU. Renowned speakers, special programming, and live kumzits straight from the Kosel!  For more information and to pre-register see below. https://go.ou.org/ejljxmkA 

To support the efforts to publish Yonas Eilem, the writings of Rav Yona Minsker Hy”d: https://charidy.com/yonasilem 

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The challenging and nearly impossible situations confronting Jewish victims during the Holocaust presented many varied moral dilemmas. This episode will explore some of those stories and dilemmas faced by members of the medical profession - physicians, nurses and healthcare providers. In ghettos and camps, with a dearth of medical supplies and proper hygienic conditions, many rose to the challenge and continued to provide health care and attempted to save as many lives as possible under increasingly dire straits. 

Dr. Adina Swajger in the Warsaw Ghetto tried to provide care for children in the Jewish children’s hospital in the ghetto. When she realized she couldn’t save them, she decided to at least spare them the horrors of Treblinka. Dr. Gisele Perl performed abortions at Auschwitz in order to save the mother’s lives, and then spent the rest of her postwar career as a fertility specialist in order to bring more life into the world. Dr. Marc Dvorzhetzki served as a physician in the Vilna Ghetto and even in a concentration camp in Estonia towards the end of the war. And there are so many more. The dilemmas they faced, the heroic and selfless acts they courageously did to save others, can serve as a legacy to Jewish heroism in the face of Nazi atrocity.

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Rav Yehuda Amital (1924-2010) was a unique leader and builder of Torah of the 20th century. Born in Grosswardein, he survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the Land of Israel where he studied in the Chevron Yeshiva. While teaching at his father in law Rav Tzvi Yehuda Melter’s yeshiva in Rechovot he formulated the idea of the Hesder Yeshiva, through which the yeshiva students served in the military along with their yeshiva studies. Following the Six Day War he was hired to head the new Yeshivat Har Etzion in Gush Etzion. He remained at its helm for more than four decades. During the Yom Kippur War he lost eight students, and this tragic loss made a profound impact on him, coupled with his memory and view of the great destruction of the Holocaust. Later on in life, in addition to his yeshiva responsibilities, he publicly voiced his opinion on political issues. Though iconoclastic in many of his positions, he never hesitated to articulate what he felt needed to be expressed.

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Rav Moshe Sofer the Chasam Sofer (1762-1839) was both a leader and halachic decisor throughout his long rabbinical career. As he confronted a changing world where traditional Jewish life faced developing challenges of modernity, his vision, brilliance and sense of responsibility led him to utilize the halachic responsa he authored as a medium through which to express the traditional response through a continually evolving methodology.

While still a young rabbi in Mattersdorf, the Chasam Sofer defended the local Frankfurt custom of his youth against the hegemony of a collective Ashkenaz identity. Yet a decade later as rabbi of Pressburg, he utilized the idea of collective Ashkenaz halachic identity following the rulings of the Ramah, as a mechanism for closing ranks around a strong traditional base in the wake of expansive attempts at reforming traditional halacha. During the last decade of the Chasam Sofer’s life, he expressed a pessimism regarding the future of rabbinical leadership as he witnessed many rabbis of his day leaning towards the reforming of halacha. His creative solution this time was to raise the banner of the Jewish communal collective, elevating the status of custom and rabbinic ordinance to the level of a Torah ordained obligation. The Chasam Sofer’s keen perception of the challenges facing traditional Judaism form the basis of his legacy until this very day. 

Check out our previous episodes on the life and leadership of the Chasam Sofer:

Part 1: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/e/hungarian-royalty-the-chasam-sofer-his-family/

Part 2: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/e/chasam-sofer-part-ii-old-traditions-new-message/

Part 3: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/e/chasam-sofer-part-iii-a-pressburg-situation/

Part 4: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/e/chasam-sofer-part-iv-from-frankfurt-to-exile/ 

For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history contact Yehuda at:  [email protected]

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One of the enduring antisemitic tropes has been the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ forgery. Fabricated in Czarist Russia in the early 20th century, it was later exported to Western Europe and the United States. Jews have responded to Antisemitism in a variety of ways, including humor, emigration and Jewish nationalism.

The early 20th century saw the rise of racial Antisemitism which had evolved in the nationalistic environment of Europe of the late 19th century. The culmination of racial theory and racial Antisemitism was through the Nazi racial ideology which formed the ideological basis of the Holocaust and Final Solution. Antisemitism didn’t disappear following the war, and it manifested itself in the Soviet Union, Europe, United States and the Moslem world.

This series on the history of Antisemitism has been sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies that equips students with the tools to search out their own unique path into the study of Jewish history and scholarship. For more information on admission to the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, including scholarship opportunities, please visit https://gsjs.touro.edu/ or call 212-463-0400, ext. 55580

For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history contact Yehuda at:  [email protected] 

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The 19th century brought the rise of nationalism in European society along with the idea of emancipation and equality among the nation’s citizenry. In Western Europe the Jewish population ultimately became beneficiaries of Emancipation, but nationalism generally precluded including the Jews on an ideological level. And thus modern Antisemitism was born. Emancipation stated that Jews are now part of society, and nationalism generally rejected them from society. The term Antisemitism was born in Germany, was quite prominent in France and was brought to the full brunt of its expression in Imperial Russia of the Czars where its massive Jewish population didn’t even receive emancipation. In the closing decade of the 19th century and the opening decade of the 20th, two major antisemitic trials rocked the Jewish world. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish officer on the French general staff, who was falsely accused of espionage. The controversy surrounding his innocence and wrongful conviction divided French society. Mendel Beilis was a superintendent of a factory in Kiev and was falsely accused of ritual murder. The virulently antisemitic trial which ensued attempted to frame the entire Jewish People and was reminiscent of medieval anti Jewish expression. 

This series on the history of Antisemitism has been sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies that equips students with the tools to search out their own unique path into the study of Jewish history and scholarship. For more information on admission to the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, including scholarship opportunities, please visit https://gsjs.touro.edu/ or call 212-463-0400, ext. 55580

For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history contact Yehuda at:  [email protected] 

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Antisemitism or anti-semitism or anti-Semitism or Jew hatred or hatred of the Jewish People has been around since antiquity. Expressing itself in various ways over time and place, it has remained a salient feature of Jewish history often with tragic consequences. While the Middle Ages is often associated with religious/Christian/Church anti Jewish discrimination, which often culminated in expulsions, pogroms, crusades, forced conversions and ritual murder charges, the 19th century is more associated with a manifestation of antisemitism in a modern form, at the nexus of nationalism and Jew hatred. This was followed by racial antisemitism with its most deadly expression in the Nazi Holocaust.

Despite the seemingly orderly chronological sequence of the development of antisemitism over the millennia, it was often a confluence of factors - religious, economic, racial, nationalistic - through which anti Jewish policies were implemented throughout history. This three part series will explore some of the distinctive features of Jew hatred, with a focus on modern antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This series on the history of Antisemitism has been sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies that equips students with the tools to search out their own unique path into the study of Jewish history and scholarship. For more information on admission to the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, including scholarship opportunities, please visit https://gsjs.touro.edu/ or call 212-463-0400, ext. 55580

For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history contact Yehuda at:  [email protected] 

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The Chabad & Breslov chassidic dynasties have always had Mashpi’im - influencers or teachers - who taught chassidic thought and inspired their communities. In recent years there’s been a growing popularity of Mashpi’im around the entire chassidic world and even beyond. Where does the idea of a chassidic mashpia originate from? Does it have historical precedent in the chassidic movement? Is history repeating itself? How did the chassidic movement maintain its vitality so successfully over the centuries? This episode will attempt to provide a macro view with some recurring themes over the course of nearly three centuries of the history of the chassidic movement. In a seemingly cyclical fashion, the chassidic movement’s demographic growth and communal successes have led to institutionalization and a danger of losing the initial spiritual vitality so essential to its essence. At several junctures in its storied history, the chassidic movement has successfully rejuvenated itself in creative ways, never losing its spark or its mission despite external challenges and internal struggles.

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An unscripted conversation with Dovi Safier and Seforim Chatter podcast host Nachi Weinstein summarizing an amazing trip to Central Europe with the Daf Yomi Chaburah of Reb Sruly Borenstein and Eli Slomowitz of E&S Tours. This casual discussion covers the people and places we saw - Vienna, Bratislava (Chasam Sofer), Mikulov (Nikolsburg), Holesov (the Shach) & Prague. As we review this exciting trip, we attempt to provide some historical background and analysis, while it is constantly accompanied by light banter as well.

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As long as there has been marriage, there has been divorce throughout history. The legal procedure of providing a ‘Get’ to terminate a marriage under Torah law, has often provided a window into the wider context of social and communal life throughout Jewish history. The intricate laws of Gittin have been the backdrop of rabbinical leadership, communal crisis and halachic creativity. In honor of the Daf Yomi commencement of Maseches Gittin, this episode will explore some curious angles and anecdotes in which a Get appears as the player in Jewish history.

This episode is sponsored by Daf Yomi with Shaul C. Greenwald, a fast-moving energetic daf shiur, delivered with clarity and intensity. The shiur is available daily on all podcast platforms, All Daf and Torah Anytime. https://alldaf.org/series/5677/  

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