Shmuel Berenbaum, 87, Led Brooklyn Yeshiva
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Rabbi Shmuel Berenbaum, a Talmudic scholar who led a Brooklyn yeshiva for a half century after fleeing German-occupied Poland, has died. He was 87.
Berenbaum died Sunday after a long struggle with cancer, said Rabbi Pinchos Hecht, executive director of the 1,200-member Mir Yeshiva. Another branch of the yeshiva is in Jerusalem, with an estimated 4,000 students.
Mayor Bloomberg released a statement praising Berenbaum, noting that he built the Jewish academy “into one of the largest centers for Torah study in the world.”
Berenbaum was born in Poland and studied in a yeshiva in the town of Mir before World War II. As the Nazis rolled across Eastern Europe, Berenbaum and other yeshiva students fled across the Soviet Union and resettled in Shanghai. From there, they eventually emigrated to the United States.
Steven Bayme, national director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Congress, said the yeshiva helped preserve “a world that was otherwise lost.”
“The rescue of the institution during the Holocaust by going to Shanghai was an act of incredible daring. It took enormous courage and perseverance,” Mr. Bayme added.
Police estimated that tens of thousands of mourners turned out for a funeral Monday. His body was to be flown to Israel on Tuesday for burial in Jerusalem, Hecht said.
Leadership of the yeshiva will pass to Berenbaum’s nephew, Rabbi Osher Kalmanowitz.
