The Torah Class That Almost Didn’t Happen and Transformed a Neighborhood

Nearly fifty years ago, Rabbi Reuven Elbaz was approached by a student of the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef with a simple request: would he give a Torah class at a small synagogue in Jerusalem? The catch? It would require a two-hour roundtrip by bus, just to deliver a 30-minute lesson.

“At first, I refused,” Rabbi Elbaz recounts in his book Mashcheini Acharecha. “I was a young kollel student, and I thought to myself, ‘What about my learning? It will suffer!’”

But everything changed after a short conversation with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef himself. After a lecture, Rabbi Ovadia called him aside and asked: “I heard you turned down a request to give a shiur (Torah class)?”

“I told him, ‘Rabbi, what will become of my own learning?’” Rabbi Elbaz replied.

With piercing clarity, Rabbi Ovadia responded: “And what about those poor Jews? Who will teach them even a single halacha (Jewish law)? You want to grow in Torah while they remain completely ignorant? You’ll feast on meat while they chew on stones?!”

He explained that Torah is likened to food and drink, quoting the verse, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed” (Mishlei 9:5) and the sages' explanation of the verse in Chagigah 14a.

Rabbi Ovadia then gave him a promise: “Go. Don’t worry. Hashem will repay you double.”

From Four People to a Flourishing Community

Rabbi Elbaz agreed to go. When he arrived for the first class, he found only four people. “Not even a minyan,” he says. But he persisted. Within a month, there were 40 men attending, and they brought 20 of their children with them. Many had never even stepped into a synagogue before. Some had sold ice cream and popsicles on Shabbat, simply out of ignorance.

Slowly, these men began asking halachic (Jewish legal) questions. They started keeping mitzvot (Divine commandments). Today, they are God-fearing Jews. Their sons are accomplished Torah scholars. Their grandchildren are a holy generation.

Rabbi Elbaz explains: “When the community thirsts for Torah, you cannot exempt yourself with excuses—‘I’m not cut out for it,’ ‘I don’t have the energy,’ ‘I have my own study schedule.’ Those are just excuses.”

He quotes Pirkei Avot (4:5): “One who learns in order to teach, he is given the ability to learn and to teach.” Not only will your Torah learning not be diminished, but it will grow and flourish.

When Two People Are Enough

“It doesn’t always start big,” says Rabbi Elbaz. He tells of how he once asked a yeshiva student to give a class at a synagogue on Shabbat. The student replied, “There’s nobody there. Who would I be speaking to?” Rabbi Elbaz said, “Start teaching and people will come.”

After the first class, the student reported back: “There were two people.”

“Wonderful!” Rabbi Elbaz told him. “That’s already a zimun (group of three men)! Keep going, and Hashem will help you. Two will become three, three will become six…”

Soon, over 25 people were attending regularly. But to truly engage the crowd, they needed more than words. They needed warmth. “Offer them refreshments,” Rabbi Elbaz said. “Cake and drinks open the heart. As the Talmud says (Sanhedrin 103b): ‘Great is sharing food, it brings people closer.’”

The speaker didn’t have the money, so Rabbi Elbaz advised him to use ma’aser (tithe) funds. As he was buying snacks at the store, a man asked what it was for. When he heard it was for a weekly shiur, he turned to the store owner and said, “Put everything on my bill.”

The Power of Sacrifice

Quoting a Midrash on Mishlei 10, Rabbi Elbaz explains that when a Torah scholar gives a public class, “Hashem forgives the sins of Israel.”

He adds, “Sometimes, it’s hard. Imagine sitting with your children on Shabbat, savoring words of Torah, a moment of delight, a taste of the World to Come. And then… you have to leave it all to teach a class. It’s not easy. But when you do it for the sake of Heaven, Hashem rewards you beyond measure.”

“This all started with someone who didn’t believe in himself,” Rabbi Elbaz says. “He hesitated. Tried to get out of it. He thought, ‘Who am I? Who will come?’ He only began because he was pushed and the first class had just two people. And look where it led.”