Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
4 min read
3 min read
4 min read
< 1 min read
In 1892 the famed yeshiva closed it doors.
The Volozhin Yeshiva was founded in 1803 in Volozhin, Belarus by Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner. It was famously dubbed "the mother of all yeshivas" as many prominent yeshivot in Lithuania, Israel, and New York City were modeled after it.
In 1892, the Russian government began to pressure the yeshiva to introduce more secular subjects and when Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin refused to comply, the government forcibly closed the yeshiva.
The yeshiva was reopened in 1899 but closed again during WWII, when the Nazis turned it into a stable. The building was restored to the Jewish community in 1989 and was turned over to the Jewish Religious Union of Belarus in 2000.
In 2007, the Belarusian government threatened to repossess the building unless it was paid $20,000 for renovations, which was done through the efforts of the American Jewish community.
