Episode 261 - The Founding of Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim.

00:01 We are continuing to talk about the leadership of the Rebbe Rashab, the son of the Rebbe Maharash. The Rebbe Rashab was involved in several major areas, but one of the most important was founding the Tomchei Temimim yeshivah, the famous Chabad yeshivah that today has spread throughout the world. Its students are the shluchim of the Rebbe shlita, Melech HaMoshiach, across the globe. We will now tell you about certain aspects of the yeshivah. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates that in 5657, that is, 1897, the first year of Tomchei Temimim in Lubavitch, all the work of preparing the shmurah matzah passed into the hands of the yeshivah students. In previous years, the wheat for shmurah matzah had been ground at a watermill with every stringency observed, including new millstones and other measures. That year, the mill’s owners changed it over to wheels, so arrangements were made to grind the wheat for the shmurah matzah by hand. They began working on the wheat at the very start of Adar. The wheat was sorted three times before it was ground. There was a very precise procedure for every step. Drawing the water to be left overnight on the evening before baking the matzos for the mitzvah, and preparing to bake the shmurah matzos on Erev Pesach, had their own special procedures and work. The senior students of the yeshivah did this work. They received specific cautions and instructions about everything: drawing the water, kashering the oven for baking the matzos, the procedures for baking and kneading, and supervising every detail. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates that once a student who was learned and talented came to Tomchei Temimim, and the yeshivah’s admissions committee was very pleased to accept him. The procedure for admitting new students to Tomchei Temimim was that, once admissions were complete, a detailed list of those accepted would be written up. “And I,” relates the Frierdiker Rebbe, “as the yeshivah’s acting director, would bring the list to my father, the Rebbe Rashab, together with a general and detailed account of the opinions of both the open admissions committee and a confidential committee about each student individually.

03:04 “My father, the Rebbe Rashab, wanted to know every detail. When we came to the student we have just been discussing, my father took a particular interest in him. The young man was talented, but according to the confidential committee’s report, he had coarse character traits, and his face, too, was not particularly refined. My father, the Rebbe, thought about it at length, considered the matter deeply, went over the report several times, and finally said that the young man should indeed be accepted as a student, but that he would need to be handled firmly. As soon as the list of students was approved, around the middle of Cheshvan, I set an especially strict schedule for this student,” relates the Frierdiker Rebbe. “I instructed those supervising the study of Nigleh and Chassidus to pay particular attention to him, and this continued all winter. At the beginning of Teves, my father, the Rebbe Rashab, traveled abroad. Around the beginning of Adar, when it was time to start sorting the wheat for the shmurah matzah, my father wrote in one of his letters that I should assign this student all the hard work involved in preparing the shmurah matzah, and that I should write to him about how the student was doing with the work. That year, my father was due to arrive in Lubavitch only a few days before Pesach. Of course, I carried out all my father’s instructions meticulously. I loaded this student with all the hard jobs—sorting the wheat, setting up the hand millstones, and grinding the wheat itself—until, for two weeks, he did not have a moment’s rest, day or night. But everything was arranged so that he would not sense that a particular instruction was being carried out. Generally speaking, the Temimim in Lubavitch did not ask ‘why.’

05:49 “If they were told to do something, they did it. In general, Tomchei Temimim in Lubavitch was founded on four principles: truth, love, loyalty, and devotion. A student of the yeshivah was considered a son. The love among the students was extraordinary. The loyalty and devotion of the students to the directors, and of the directors to the students, were complete in the fullest sense of the words. Only that kind of approach could raise the kind of students that Tomchei Temimim did indeed raise and educate. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu bless them. When matzah had to be baked for everyone in the household, all the work was placed on the shoulders of the student we have been discussing. That is, all the students worked, but I assigned the hard jobs specifically to him. When my father returned to Lubavitch, in addition to the reports I had sent him in my letters, he asked about this student in particular and in detail. When the time came to prepare for baking the shmurah matzos on Erev Pesach, I gave this young man, in addition to all his other work, the honor of doing bedikas chametz in the yeshivah office with a group. That work continued until two or three in the morning, and at seven on Erev Pesach morning he had to be at the shmurah matzah bakery to kasher it. When all the work was finished, I called him over at five in the afternoon and told him to study the maamar ‘Sheshes Yamim’ in the Siddur thoroughly, and to come to me at seven the next morning, the first day of Pesach, so that I could study the maamar with him. I knew, of course,” relates the Frierdiker Rebbe, “that this student was one of those in charge of the tables in the large hall. The large hall was called the big zal. It was where the students of Tomchei Temimim studied, and where they ate together throughout Pesach. The dining tables were arranged in a very definite order and numbered. Each student had a fixed place for all eight days of the festival, and each table had a supervisor responsible for order,

08:28 “who was called a ‘memuneh.’ Until after the Seder, which would surely continue until two in the morning, I thought to myself, this student would not have even fifteen minutes free to study. The whole point was to see how much studying Chassidus mattered to him. And indeed, at seven in the morning he had the maamar firmly in his mind, to the extent of his knowledge of Chassidus at the time. I studied with him until eight, then went in to my father, the Rebbe, and told him the whole story. My father was pleased and said, ‘With Hashem’s help, we have planted a tree that bears fruit. I hope it will grow and cause others to grow. Though it will take a long time, eventually it will have many branches, with much fruit and further growth.’ On the last day of Pesach, during the festive meal with the yeshivah students in the large hall”—here the Frierdiker Rebbe explains that on the last day of Pesach the students would invite the Rebbe Rashab to join them for the Yom Tov meal. They would linger over the meal, the Rebbe would say Chassidus, and afterward they would go out dancing and rejoice until late—“my father said to me, ‘Yosef Yitzchak, look what a moment of a mitzvah can accomplish.’ My father was referring to that young man. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘his face has changed completely. The coarseness is gone, and one can see a human face.’” And a little about the history of the yeshivah. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates: “Whatever my father, the Rebbe Rashab, did, he wanted to test it and be sure it was genuine. So when he founded Tomchei Temimim, too, he wanted some way to test whether it was in practice what he had intended. On 15 Elul 5657, my father announced that he was going to found a yeshivah. He selected about twenty of the best students from a larger group of young men who studied Torah and feared Hashem, and entrusted them to the guidance of a Chassidic teacher, a teacher who did not”

11:07 He was given titles such as “the learned Rabbi” and the like, for he was a Jew thoroughly imbued with Chabad chassidic guidance. His name was Rabbi Shmuel Gronem Esterman, of blessed memory. My father entrusted him with the program for educating and guiding the young men to be Jews ready to sacrifice themselves for Torah, for mitzvos, and for Ahavas Yisroel. A year passed. At the beginning of Elul, that mashpia, Rabbi Shmuel Gronem Esterman, brought the students entrusted to him to my father, the Rebbe Rashab, for an examination. The examination lasted several days. Afterward, on Monday, 18 Elul 5658, in the presence of ten chassidim, my father announced: “Today is 18 Elul, two hundred years since the birth of our teacher the Baal Shem Tov. Today, after the examination, we have a yeshiva in which the Baal Shem Tov’s approach of self-sacrifice will find expression, in keeping with the explanations of the Alter Rebbe and all the Rebbes who followed him, the Chabad nesi’im, concerning knowledge of G-dliness and Ahavas Yisroel.” Over its first three years, the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva became known throughout the Torah world, and many young men from all over Russia flocked to it. By its fifth anniversary, the yeshiva was fully established and had several hundred students, and it continued to grow from year to year. Divisions and branches were established in various places in White Russia, Little Russia, Lithuania, Poland, the Caucasus, and Bukhara. A large branch of the yeshiva was established in Eretz Yisroel, in a large building in Hebron that was my father’s private property, and was called Yeshivas Toras Emes. The Tomchei Temimim yeshivas held a leading place in the world of yeshivas through their approach to education and guidance, and through their hundreds of students scattered across many countries, serving as rabbis, heads of yeshivas, shochtim, teachers, cantors, scribes, merchants, factory owners, craftsmen, bookkeepers, and more. But each of them carried provisions for the road that he had received in Torah, Chassidus, and good character traits while at the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva. The self-sacrifice of Tomchei Temimim students throughout the world has

13:55 borne good fruit in recent decades in the field of education and the strengthening of Jewish life. When the despicable Yevsektsiya persecuted religion, and religious Jewish life in Russia was punishable by torture and death, the students of Tomchei Temimim worked to strengthen Jewish life with self-sacrifice in all its splendor. In Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, the Tomchei Temimim yeshivas occupy a most honored place in the world of yeshivas and are held in esteem by the great Torah scholars of the Jewish people.