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The destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust decimated more than the thousands of Jewish communities of Europe. Europe had been the epicenter of Ashkenazic Jewish life for 1,000 years, and with the destruction of the 6 million Jews, came everything that generations of Jewish communities had built over the millennium. A world of Jewish infrastructure – shuls, Jewish schools, mikvaos, yeshivos, giant Torah sages and their students – ceased to exist.
If we were around to assess the state of the nation after WW2, it would be very hard to construct an optimistic outlook. But look at where we are now: The Jewish communities reestablished themselves in the USA and in the newly founded State of Israel, and in some ways, certain parts of Jewish life – and particularly Torah life – are stronger than they were before the Holocaust. Prior to the Holocaust, there were maybe a couple of thousand Torah scholars in the yeshiva world of Europe; today, in the largest yeshiva in the world – the Mir yeshiva – a yeshiva that I am a proud graduate of, there are nearly 10,000 full-time Torah scholar students, and that’s only one of hundreds – maybe thousands – of such institutions in the world. Prior to the war, the Torah-centric world within Jewry was in decline, and now it is an ascendant juggernaut. Where did all this come from? Who founded this world? Perhaps there are several answers to that question. But certainly in Israel we can point to one man and declare that he spawned this revolution, and that is Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, universally known as the Chazon Ish after the eponymous title of his works – and he is going to be the subject of this Jewish History podcast and the one that follows
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This Jewish History Podcast is sponsored by my dear friend, Yigal Rifkind, in honor of Kaileigh Weiss on the occasion of her birthday. Happy Birthday, Kaileigh, and thank you Yigal for your support and friendship.
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