The Incredible Survival of a Key Jewish Text After the Holocaust

The Jewish people suffered a tremendous blow in the Holocaust. Millions were killed in horrific ways, and thousands of communities were destroyed. Chassidic groups, study houses, yeshivas, and ancient synagogues were left in ruins.

The city of Brisk in Lithuania was once full of scholars and writers. Many of them were martyred, and only a few yeshiva students from the city survived. Among the most famous were Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik and Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, who fled to Switzerland before the war to escape military conscription. These two went on to become great leaders of the generation.

One of the rabbis from the city, and a yeshiva head, was Rabbi Moshe Sokolovsky. Rabbi Moshe was an exceptional genius. In his youth, he wrote a book titled "Melachat Yom Tov," but it is not well-known due to an interesting reason: at 24, he met the genius Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik and spoke with him in study. This conversation changed his life and his way of learning, leading him to decide that the book written before this meeting would not be published. It was only printed after his passing.

His more famous book, studied in every yeshiva, is "Imrei Moshe." It deals with the most fundamental and basic topics of yeshiva scholarship and is considered a "classic" in every yeshiva. However, its presence with us today is not taken for granted.

In the pre-World War yeshivas of Lithuania, the book held a place of honor, and every yeshiva had worn copies from use. Rabbi Moshe Sokolovsky passed away before the war, suffering a stroke in the middle of delivering a deep lecture on the Talmudic tractate Yevamot. His book continued to be foundational and widespread, but when the ax fell on the Lithuanian yeshivas, none of the fleeing survivors took a copy of "Imrei Moshe." With great difficulty, a few yeshiva students managed to save their lives, and they certainly couldn't carry books.

When the yeshivas were reestablished in Israel, the longing of the teachers, yeshiva heads, and students for the admired "Imrei Moshe" was profound, but the book was simply not available. They reluctantly assumed it would become a memory, like many other treasures lost in the Holocaust.

However, in Bnei Brak lived the scholar Rabbi Yaakov Kanievsky, known as the Steipler, a graduate of the Navardok Yeshiva. By chance, he heard rumors about students searching for "Imrei Moshe," and then he remembered that he once received the book as a gift from the author during a visit to Brisk. When the yeshiva students realized that the beloved book had resurfaced, they quickly made a photographic edition, which was distributed in yeshivas across the country. Since then, it's been reprinted in new and grand editions, and anyone studying the tractate Yevamot hurries to get "Imrei Moshe" for a deeper understanding of the tractate.