Rav Avraham Pam רב אברהם פאם

Born in Vidz, Lithuania, he came to America with his family at fourteen. He learned at the Torah Vodaath yeshiva in Brooklyn under Rav Shlomo Heiman, from 1938 taught there himself and never left it until his death—over sixty years within the same walls; from the 1970s he was its head.

He was known for gentleness—rare in a yeshiva world that prizes sharpness—and for speaking of simple things: peace in the home, how to talk to children, kindness. His lessons appeared as Atara LaMelech.

In 1990, when the gates of the Soviet Union opened and hundreds of thousands went to Israel, he—at seventy-seven—founded Shuvu: a network of schools where children from Soviet families learned Torah alongside mathematics. By his death in Av 2001 thousands were learning in Shuvu. Rav Yitzchak Zilber was doing the same in Jerusalem for adults; two old men, one from Kazan and one from Lithuania, were at work on one thing.