Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Kollel required deserting family for years

 The original Kollel system in Europe required the scholar leave his family for years so he would not be disturbed in his learning. according to the biography of Rav Moshe Landynski who became rosh yeshiva in Radin before being replaced with Rav Naftoli Trop.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kollel

The first kollel – in the modern sense of the term – in the Jewish diaspora was the Kovno Kollel ("Kolel Perushim"[2]) founded in Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania) in 1877.[3][4] It was founded by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter[5] and directed by Rabbi Isaac Blaser. The ten students enrolled were required to separate from their families, except for the Sabbath, and devote themselves to studying for the Rabbinate. There was a four-year limit on one's membership in the kollel.


The question is why the mitzva of marriage and family were displaced?

2 comments:

  1. Where there's a rabbi, there's a halakhic loophole.
    Just like the Sanhedrin made it impossible to deliver a death penalty but then authorized executions to maintain public order, so too decisions like this were made because "the times demands it"
    Just remember - before the Chazon Ish, z"l, innovated and changed the system, getting into kollel was for a very select few. You had to prove you'd be a "Gadol" to be considered. So it's not like hordes of men dumped their wives and went off somewhere else? It was like Rachel being happy that Rabbi Akiva ditched her and left her to live in poverty.

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  2. I wish to correct this article, my Rebitold me that they wouldonly come home for the Ragalim (predictably, they all had children born within weeks). My Rebi's father, Rav Yaakov Moshe Shurkin, was from the premier students in Radin. Famously, Rav Elchanan Wasserman asked the Chofetz Chaim for permission to return home for his son's bris to which the Chofetz Chaim replied "why, are u a Mohel?"

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