A short time after Judge David Hashin published the arbitration ruling in the dispute over Ponevezh Yeshiva, which granted the yeshiva’s president, Rabbi Avraham Kahaneman, full control of the institution, the dean, Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz, delivered a special talk to his students.
The remarks were made on Wednesday in the Perlman Hall on the Yeshiva campus in Bnei Brak, and were published on the Behadrei Haredim website.
In his remarks, Rabbi Markovitz said, “Since there was a rabbinical court ruling and the ruling determined that we are here, learning and teaching Torah, now, by virtue of the civil courts they want to expel us. What was in our power we did, to preserve the rabbinical ruling, and we were not successful.”
He said, “It is known and public that you grow and are immersed in Torah; it is known throughout the world that growth takes place here in a place of the elite of the elite. The inwardness that is not connected to any building exists and endures forever, and as is known, the inner is greater than the external.”
The dean stressed to his students that they must continue their studies as usual, “We do not know what the consequences will be, but our obligation is only to learn, and to be immersed in the Torah. What they will do I do not know, but we do nothing, only study, prayer and moral instruction.”
Later in his remarks he warned against any reaction toward the other side, “God forbid, do not do anything to the other side, there is no point in that, whatever they do they will do.”
He said, “One must not measure matters by a single moment; time will tell, there is a vision and a process. If twenty-five years ago what is happening now had occurred, there would not have remained any remnant, but today there is a firm root that can produce great fruits.”
At the end of his remarks Rabbi Markovitz called to increase investment in study and prayer, “A person prays in times of distress more than he prays at any other time. From now on we will all know that our prayer has greater value. We will invest more in the study sessions, in learning, in the prayers, the study sessions, the study of ethics.”
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