Jon Kelsen
Review of Glenn Dynner, The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2023)
“They don’t understand—a yeshiva bokher is not a Talmud student. A yeshiva bokher is one whose entire essence entails being a servant of God… The army poses a contradiction… In the army he’s a soldier, which is a different essence.”
So contends Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, head of the prestigious Slabodka Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, articulating his opposition to the Haredi draft in Israel.[1] Hirsch argues that this opposition is mistakenly understood by many outsiders as concerned with the lost hours of Talmud study a yeshiva student-turned soldier would forgo. But at its core, he insists, the Haredi antipathy to the army is about something deeper: the IDF proposes a competing identity, offering “soldier” in place of “yeshiva student,” the self-conception nurtured by the yeshiva. It is the prospect of an alternative identity—and a world in which to play it out—that constitutes, claims Hirsch, the draft’s true threat.
The etiology of Hirsch’s understanding of the yeshiva’s role in forming its students’ identities can be traced to a world preceding his contemporary Israeli milieu. In The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust, Glenn Dynner demonstrates how early- to mid-twentieth century Polish Hasidic yeshivot and comparable educational structures functioned as powerful cultural interventions. In Dynner’s telling, these yeshivot comprised “total institutions,” whole worlds with unique values and aspirations, capable of contending with attractive competing ideologies. The contemporary Israeli Haredi yeshiva—Hasidic and non-Hasidic alike—has adopted an analogous strategy, applying it to what they consider a comparably threatening environment (though the Zionist Israeli world, of course, stridently rejects the comparison).
Dynner traces the trajectory of Polish Hasidism as it navigated the upheavals of the First World War, a period often portrayed as a crisis of faith and identity. Accounts from the time highlight the panic over youth defections. Some left the fold entirely, while others lived double lives—outwardly donning Hasidic garb while engaging in nontraditional behaviors. In one particularly evocative image from a Shabbat Passover day in Warsaw, Hasidic youth, some draped in tallitot, were seen smoking and kibitzing around a table set with a sliced loaf of rye.[2] The history of Hasidism during this period often depicts a stagnant, if not declining, culture, far from the vitality of its origins.
Yet Dynner challenges and nuances this narrative, arguing that both Hasidism and traditionalism remained more resilient than often assumed. This resilience was due in no small part to the educational interventions his book examines. Until World War I, and unlike their misnagdic (non-Hasidic traditionalist) counterparts, Hasidim tended to learn in small groups in their local houses of study (kloyzn). The embrace of the yeshiva model—by the Hasidic courts of Bobov, Radomsk, Lubavitch, Piaseczno, Ger, and Slonim, among others[3]—served to create formal, totalizing institutions that housed not only books and tables, but entire cultures.
One of Dynner’s key arguments is his attention to Hasidic education as a response to oppression, “physical and spiritual pogroms” alike. The expansion and institutionalization of Hasidic yeshivot were not merely defensive maneuvers against the encroachment of secularism or the state’s regulatory pressures, such as compulsory public schooling and Polonization. They were creative, adaptive efforts to reinforce Hasidic identity in a changing world. This response was both innovative and deeply traditional. The formalization of yeshivot marked an embrace of modern institutional structures—Hasidic leaders recognized that a more systematic framework was necessary to sustain their communities. At the same time, turning to education was entirely in keeping with the longstanding Jewish tradition of (re)turning to Torah study at moments of existential threat.
Dynner’s project is itself an act of resistance. He resists the all-too-common depiction of interwar Hasidism as an irreversible decline, a world degraded from its original fervor into a stale, behavioristic remnant besieged by external pressures and overshadowed by the allure of secular ideologies. Against this “lachrymose” narrative—Salo Baron’s celebrated critique of tragedy-centered Jewish historiography—Dynner restores a sense of vitality, adaptation, and agency to the Hasidic figures of the period.
While the book begins by outlining the challenges Hasidism faced, and later chapters focus heavily on the politicization of Hasidism through Agudah and other channels, Chapters II and VI—devoted to educational interventions—will be especially arresting for readers interested in education. Chapter II, aptly titled “A Higher Education,” nods both to the advanced scholarly pursuits within and to the elevation of their value over the alternatives offered outside the yeshiva walls. The rise of Hasidic yeshivot emerges in the context of internal Jewish currents—Hasidism positioning itself contra Bundism, Zionism, and secularism—alongside external cultural and political pressures. What began as small-scale educational initiatives soon blossomed into a vibrant ecosystem of Hasidic yeshivot and centers of learning.
One of the most remarkable innovations of this period, and one that granted new agency to a previously neglected population, was the work of Sarah Schenirer. Her founding of the Bais Yaakov school—and ultimately the Bais Yaakov movement—revolutionized Hasidic girls’ education. As Naomi Seidman observes, Bais Yaakov embodied a dual character: “the forces of charisma and institution, revolution and routine, center and periphery, operated in tandem even after the institutionalization of the movement.”[4] This insight highlights the paradoxical nature of Hasidic modernization and mirrors the broader institutionalization of Hasidic yeshivot, which transformed into formidable centers of continuity and adaptation.
On one level, Hasidic yeshivot offered a kind of escape from the world, refuges from the vicissitudes of external life. These structures held self-contained worlds, functioning as spiritual enclaves indifferent to physical and material hardships.[5] This move has deep roots in the rabbinic tradition, echoing the tale (Shabbat 33b) of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his son retreating into a cave to escape Roman oppression. Rejecting Roman contributions—marketplaces, bridges, bathhouses—they stripped away the physical world, burying their bodies (though not their heads) in sand and immersing themselves in Torah study.
Consider, too, another talmudic hero-educator (Bava Metzia 85b): Rabbi Hiyya. Confronted with the challenge of preserving Torah study in the face of possible extinction, he devised an ingenious pedagogical system. He sustained orphans, prepared parchment, wrote sacred texts, and taught Torah and Mishnah to groups of children, instructing them to continue learning from one another in his absence. His method—equal parts resourcefulness, devotion, and communal empowerment—ensured that “Torah will not be forgotten from Israel.”
This narrative resonates profoundly with the Hasidic response to the interbellum crisis. Education was not merely a practical necessity but a sacred mission, an active defiance of historical forces threatening to erode religious life. Like Rabbi Hiyya, Hasidic leaders had to provide not only educational substance but the material infrastructure: buildings, dormitories, grounds, tuition, staff salaries, and meals. This contrasts vividly with the informal kloyz structure, where students slept on benches or floors and relied on essen teg—rotating meals in community members’ homes. Unlike Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, they had no miraculous carob tree; they fundraised relentlessly to sustain their students.
In short: as much as the yeshiva offered escape, its commitment to learning was not merely defensive. It was an act of optimism, an embrace of an authentically Jewish and Hasidic cultural activity—devotional Torah lernen.
With Torah study at its center, these yeshivot could function as what Dynner identifies as “total institutions”—spaces cultivating a Hasidic self imbued with nobility, agency, dynamism, and flourishing. The sociological concept of the total institution, attributed to Erving Goffman, describes a self-contained world that regulates every aspect of its members’ lives through structured routines, physical separation, and an overarching ideological system. This notion has been applied to prisons, monastic orders, and—tellingly (cue Hirsch)—military academies. Hirsch would recognize this phenomenon in his own yeshiva; only a total institution, insulated from the outside world, could create a unified “essence” in its students.
This vision of the yeshiva helps explain why Hasidic leaders sought to build grand educational edifices such as Yeshivat Hakhmei Lublin. Directed by the charismatic R. Meir Shapira and his wife, the yeshiva embodied the dignity and refinement of a noble culture, complete with dormitory, cafeteria, and library. It provided “a singular experience of rigorous study infused with Hasidic joy.”[6] Such an approach aligns well with the educational philosophy of R. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira—the Piaseczner Rebbe, dubbed the “Pedagogic Rebbe” by Hillel Zeitlin—who, in his writings and in his own Hasidic yeshiva, Da‘at Moshe, sought to persuade his students of their inherent nobility and spiritual grandeur. Again, the Hasidic yeshiva was not merely preservationist; it proclaimed that Hasidic life was not only enduring but flourishing.
That declaration of Hasidic agency, optimism, and cultural resilience was not destined to be proclaimed only in the grand halls of Hakhmei Lublin-style yeshivot. In the ghettos and camps, it moved underground. Documentation of clandestine ghetto yeshiva bunkers and Bais Yaakov schools reveals secret cellars, accessed through hidden passageways, where the sounds of intensive Talmud study echoed defiantly.[7] The image is profoundly moving—a resurrection of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai’s cave, not in ancient Galilee but in wartime Warsaw. Torah study became both resistance and testimony. When a student remarked that such suffering must surely herald the Messiah, R. David Bornstein of Sochaczew replied, “True, the Messiah may come at any moment… but in the meantime we should study a page of Talmud.”[8]
Dynner incorporates a wonderfully rich array of material drawn from diverse sources, enlivening the book with textured depictions of the world he reconstructs. Pictures and tables further enhance the reader’s immersion. Though at times the rush of facts can distract from the narrative, it is a small price for the breadth of data Dynner has assembled.
By reframing the story of interwar Hasidism, Dynner shifts the focus from decline to resilience. Education was not a desperate last stand against modernity’s onslaught; it was a strategic, deeply rooted response that ensured Hasidism’s continued vibrancy. These yeshivot set out to promote hinukh, famously defined by the Piaseczner not as mere pedagogy but as initiation—bringing students into the full development of their sacred core selves, or, as Hirsch might say, their “essence.”
In closing, we return to R. Hirsch. It is striking to read Dynner’s work amid the current debates in Israel regarding the Haredi draft, intensified in the post–October 7 reality and during the war in Gaza. Presumably, R. Hirsch and his contemporaries would recognize and approve of the educational initiatives of interwar Bobov, Lubavitch, Piaseczno, and Radomsk; indeed, I argue, they seek—consciously or not—to apply them to their own twenty-first-century context. Yet, regarding the moral and religious valence of their framing, perhaps we should end with another quote from the Piaseczner, directed in a different context as a rebuke to his fellow Hasidic leaders:
“The administration and deans of the yeshivot, who are totally immersed in the life of the yeshiva and its students and encounter only the elite of our youth, are unaware of the gravity of this problem… Poke your heads outside of the four cubits of your yeshiva… Should we be satisfied with merely the handful of students who attend our yeshivot? Is this the entirety of the people of Israel?”[9]
A powerful question indeed.
[1] Cited in Shilo Fried, “A Leading Lithuanian-Haredi Rabbi: The essential reality of the army is not for a yeshiva student,” in Yediot Aharonot (26 July 2024).
[2] Dynner, 20.
[3] See Table 2.1 in ibid., 89.
[4] Cited in ibid., 49.
[5] See ibid., 172.
[6] Ibid., 84.
[7] See ibid., 174-180.
[8] Ibid., 181.
[9] See the Introduction to R. Shapira’s Hovat HaTalmidim, “The Students’ Obligation.”
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