Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz
Date of Passing: 3-Elul. Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz had a more profound influence on Torah education in America than almost...
Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz
(1886 – 1948) R' Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz had a more profound influence on Torah education in America than almost any other person. Yet, he was not a posek, a rosh yeshiva, or a chassidic rebbe, and he insisted on being called only "Mr. Mendlowitz."
R' Shraga Feivel was a leading student in the finest yeshivot in Hungary before coming to the United States in 1913. After some wandering, he accepted a job in a Scranton, Pennsylvania cheder. He was laughed at, though, when he spoke of creating a full-time day school, so he quit his job and attempted to manufacture ice cream in the hopes of some day financing his own day school.
Later, R' Shraga Feivel settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where he joined with others to found a newspaper devoted to raising the spiritual level of New York's Jews. A new chapter opened in 1923, when he was hired as the rebbe of the 8th — and highest — grade in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. Through his influence, there soon was a 9th grade, then a 10th, and so on. (His influence was felt outside the classroom as well, for example, in the dramatic increase in the market for more expensive tefilin and better tzitzit.) When his first students completed high school, he persuaded them to stay on, and thus began the new post-high school division of Torah Vodaath. This was the beginning of a Torah revolution in the Western Hemisphere- -the first post-high school yeshiva which offered no secular studies and was not devoted to producing pulpit rabbis.
Torah Vodaath was unique in another respect as well, being the first yeshiva in the world to combine the Lithuanian method of learning–R' Shraga Feivel hired many great Lithuanian roshei yeshiva–with the warmth and teachings of chassidism. Contrary to the mood in America at the time, R' Shraga Feivel encouraged his students to be expressive about their Judaism, including singing and dancing as a means of serving Hashem.
R' Shraga Feivel was instrumental in the founding or growth of many other yeshivot. For example, beginning in 1938, he refused to accept students from the area of Brooklyn where Mesivta Chaim Berlin had just been founded. Later, he would send his best students to serve as the kernel of such new institutions as Lakewood and Telz. He also directed substantial amounts of money to the fledgling Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore.
R' Shraga Feivel's concern for his students' growth did not end in June of each year. Accordingly, he "invented" the yeshiva summer camp.
Another legacy of R' Shraga Feivel is Torah U'Mesorah, the umbrella organization for hundreds of day schools throughout the United States. This organization provides financial assistance, educational materials and teacher training to schools in far- flung communities which might otherwise be bereft of Judaism.
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