Yeshiva Torah Vodaas

Yeshiva Torah Vodaas (or Mesivta Torah Vodaas) is a yeshiva in the Kensington neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.

The yeshiva was conceived in 1917 by friends Binyomin Wilhelm and Louis Dershowitz to provide a yeshiva education centering on traditional Jewish sacred texts to the children of families then moving from the Lower East Side to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The two friends contacted prominent local Rabbi Zev Gold of Congregation Beth Jacob Anshe Sholom and together they formed a board and established the yeshiva in Williamsburg as an elementary school. The Yeshiva later moved to 452 and 425 East 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11218, where it is located today. Rabbi Gold was elected as the yeshiva's first president; he suggested the name Torah Vodaas after the yeshiva founded in Lida in 1905 by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, which combined secular studies with Jewish studies and traditional Talmud study. During this first period in the yeshiva's history, all classes were taught in Hebrew.

The founding members of the yeshiva soon offered the principalship of the institution to Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, who headed the yeshiva from 1922 to 1948. Under Mendlowitz's leadership, a mesivta (yeshiva high school) was opened in 1926. Later he opened a Yeshiva Gedola as well. The yeshiva was modeled after those in Europe, with religious studies in Yiddish and Talmud taught in the Hungarian style of the European yeshivas.

Rabbi Dovid Leibovitz, a notable torah scholar from Europe was brought in to head the yeshiva's beit midrash (study hall) in 1929 but left after only four years to start his own yeshiva after personal conflicts with Rabbi Mendlowitz. Two years later, in 1935, Rabbi Shlomo Heiman became rosh yeshiva (head of the yeshiva), a position he held until his death in 1944.

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