Hundreds of students at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem who attended the Monday class this week, given by the dean, Rabbi Yehuda Finkel, were surprised to hear him deliver his teaching in Hebrew — after decades when the institution had taught only in Yiddish.
The Mir yeshiva, a.k.a. the Mirrer Yeshiva, one of the most important institutions of Lithuanian Jewish high learning, was founded in the town of Mir, in Belarus in 1815, 12 years after the founding of the Volozhin Yeshiva. After relocating a number of times during World War II, Mir evolved into three separate yeshivas, one in Jerusalem, with an additional campus in Modi’in Illit, and the other two in Brooklyn, NY.
According to Kikar Hashabbat, Rabbi Finkel taught his class in Hebrew at the central study hall in Jerusalem, one week after another dean, Rabbi Shmuelevich, had done the same a week earlier.
According to yeshiva students who spoke to Kikar hashabbat, Rabbi Finkel decided to follow in his colleague’s footsteps to avoid confusion over the institution’s lingua franca. Those same students also noted that in Israel learning in Yiddish is an archaic custom, and that many of the students simply don’t know it well enough to use it in serious learning. The dean has decided to end a custom which actually stood in the way of many student’s understanding of his teaching.
“Better to give up the Yiddish and let everyone understand the material, rather than maintain the tradition and lose the students’ attention,” the students explained.
