JACOB JR, MY JEWISH WORLD. YESHIVA CHACHMEI LUBLIN, POLAND

Thursday, Adar 21, 5775. March 12, 2015.

Shalom! World. 

The Former Academy of Sages of Lublin was financed from contributions of Jewish communities from all over the world and opened  in 1930. At the time it was the largest Talmudic school in the world. The imposing edifice was designed by Agenor Smoluchowski and erected in the years 1924-1930. Yeshiva was closed down by the nazis in 1939. After World War II it was given to the Medical Academy and housed the Collegium Maius until 2003. Presently it belongs to the Jewish Community in Warszawa - the Branch in Lublin,

Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin, was one of the largest Jewish educational initiatives in Orthodox circles in the interwar period, not only in Poland, but even in Europe. Modern, well equipped, the Lublin yeshiva was to be a world center of Talmud study training young students of Torah of Poland and the world. The war put a end to those plans yet the 'Palace of Talmud' as Rabbi Shapiro called his creation, nonetheless constituded something unique and exceptional in Jewish religious education.

The realization of famed architect Agenor Smoluchowski's design to the building cost close to 1.5 million zlotys. A wide elegant gateway led visitors through a lush green courtyard lined with rows of trees to a vast building of some 18,310 cu. meters.

The yeshiva building contained an auditorium cum Synagogue, lecture halls and a library, dormitory rooms for students and teachers, offices, a kichten and a dining hall, a bathhouse, laundry, drying room, technical facilities and storerooms. In an adjoining structure was a "state-of-the-art central healing system". Offices of the yeshiva were located on the mezzanine, along with two reading rooms for the students and a special hall for Henoch Weintraoub's model of the Jerusalem Temple.

The students lived on the upper floors in roomy, well-equipped single rooms. The dormitory was intended for a few hundred (up to five hundred) students in each room held a small library with carefully selected ethical and religious books. Living conditions were confortable - and not only in comparison with traditional yeshivas - and academic facilities, excellent library and other educational resources were designed "to encourage young people from wealthy homes to come study in Lublin" - for it was their tuition that helped cover scholarship costs for students from less well-off homes.

The bibliographic collection, with some 12-13.000 volumes as of 1930, was to have been the core of a world-class rabbinic library that was to develop in Lublin. Rabbi Shapiro had hoped to create in Lublin a Central Torah Library. The yehiva's collection included many rare prints, incunabula and precious manuscripts. No book could enter the collection until reviewed and approved personally by the rector. Students did not have free access to the entire collection, as its most valuable tomes were stored separately and only the rector himself could release them for use.

Shalom! Aleichem.

Suporte cultural:  SOUL avec L'Integration d'Association avec Israel et dans le Monde/Fr .