HaRav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel
It was a momentous evening beginning on Sunday 19 Marcheshvan at 10:00, seeing the many hundreds of people who attended, listening avidly to the keynote speaker, the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, and HaRav Nachman Leibowitz, also a Rosh Yeshiva. Especially moving was the fact that the audience was comprised of baalei batim from the business world who came to recharge their souls during a week of Yarchei Kalla Torah study under the sponsorship of the Yeshivas Mir. The event focused on the two hundredth year since the yeshiva's founding, commemorated by over two hundred laymen who were brought back to the study benches. This, it was pointed out, is the perpetuity of the yeshiva - the Torah.
HaRav Nachman Leibowitz
Thousands of students identified with the unique excitement. Not every day do they see hundreds of alumni and supporters of the yeshiva from all over the U.S. and other countries, who picked themselves up and left their affairs for an entire week and came to spend a Yarchei Kalla between the walls of the yeshiva in Jerusalem.
"I have no doubt," revealed Rabbi Orzel, one of the hundreds of past students returned to their alma pater, "that [this gathering reflects] the marvelous power of our foundry, Yeshivas Mir, which has always been able to inject and bequeath to us - each and every one of us — the love and desire for Torah study. This wondrous love has pulsed between the walls of the yeshiva for the past two centuries. It has ignited the hearts of the myriads of students with the fire of Torah by day and by night and continues to inspire and motivate them for the decades to come. When I beheld the enthusiasm of the talmidim for Torah, I understood that all the buds planted in us in our youth flourished onward for all time and will certainly continue to accompany us to our days of advanced age."
Who are among the attendees who came from abroad to spend this week?
These are some two hundred businessmen from all over the U.S. who left their affairs to return to the yeshiva benches for an entire week of pure spiritual pleasure. The combined feeling here is that this is the most exceptional event we have experienced in the past few years.
The annual Yarchei Kalla program, initiated ten years ago, has drawn more and more participants. This year, the participants converged from all over America: from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Lakewood, Florida, Texas and other places, including from all over the world.
Overview of the Yarchei Kallah beis medrash
One of the organizers adds his impressions: "The first of this cycle, ten years ago, hosted twenty-eight participants. This year the number has climbed to 250, in this two hundredth year since the founding of Yeshivas Mir. This seems to be an unheralded honor for Torah, where hundreds of guests return for an entire week to their yeshiva days, and devote their entire beings to the toil of Torah and the bliss which accompanies it, recharging themselves with a spiritual energy and fulfillment to last them for a long time to come. We are happy that the voice piece of the Torah world, Yated Ne'eman, is accompanying these days closely in this outstanding opportunity extended to those of us who seek Torah."
An especially emotional feeling occurred when we met with one of the distinguished members of the yeshiva scholars who took us back twenty-seven years in time to the old beis medrash. He looked all around, overwhelmed by the fervor of study he so visibly felt and said, with tears in his eyes, "I long for my masters and teachers who are no longer with us now. I personally feel the lack of the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, whose incredible mesirus nefesh is engraved in my soul. I pine for the eminent yeshiva heads, HaRav Refael Shmuelevitz and HaRav Nachum Partzovitz who constructed our path of study. But Mir does not consist of the figures in it but of the very essence which pulsed throughout it. I return because of my longings but Mir is here. Here!" he says, pointing to his head and his heart, and allowing the hot tears to fall from his eyes.
