Place
Bnei Brak בני ברק
The town where the yeshiva world of Eastern Europe gathered again after the war—on a site named after the city of the Mishnah.
The settlement was founded in 1924 by Polish Hasidim and named in memory of the Bnei Brak of the Mishnah—the city of Rabbi Akiva that the Passover Haggadah speaks of. Ancient Bnei Brak stood nearby.
After the war the surviving heads of yeshivas moved here, and within a generation the town became what pre-war Lithuania had been: yeshivas, Hasidic courts, publishing houses. The Chazon Ish lived here, and both rabbis and Ben-Gurion came to him for decisions; the Ponevezh and Slabodka lines settled here too.
On the timeline
5706 · 1946 CERebuilding after the War: DP Camps and New Yeshivot5700 · 1940 CEThe Rescue of the Mir Yeshiva: Vilna, Kobe, Shanghai5708 · 1948 CEThe Declaration of the State of Israel
Related
Chazon IshRabbi ShachThe Alter of SlabodkaRabbi AkivaMirRabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman—the Ponevezher Rav
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Pesachim 49a — Rabbi Akiva and the sages reclining in Bnei Brak — the city this one is named for
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Chazon Ish, Orach Chaim — the rulings people came here for from across the country
Basis: documents and evidence.