The story behind the Yeshivah Gedolah

The month of Shevat has particular significance for Chabad worldwide. Shevat 10 is the date in 1950 that saw the passing of Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (known as the Frierdicker – i.e. previous – Rebbe). A year later Shevat 10 saw the accession of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson to the leadership. However for the Australian community a particular significance is attached to Shevat 11 – the day after the date of those anniversaries.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Rabbinical College of Australia and New Zealand – the Yeshivah Gedolah, affectionately known by many simply as “YG”. Whilst a Sydney counterpart has had a chequered life, it is the only existing full-time boarding yeshivah in Australia. And whilst its most important achievement has been the education of its students, its impact over six decades since Shevat 11, 5726/1966, has been vast – reaching so much of the Australian Jewish community far beyond its Lubavitch community roots.

Without the YG would one be used to seeing young boys in hats and jackets all around the community? Who has not seen students and graduates out on the tefillin campaign trail? Who has not participated in a major Chanukah event where current students or graduates who have gone on to bigger communal postings play a major part in its organisation and running?
And how many isolated Jews in country towns across the continent have not seen any Jewish life for years or even decades – except for the yeshivah boys who visit them through the auspices of Chabad of RARA. And how many who studied at YG where they were inspired to further communal work, have become rabbis in mainstream shules, educators in schools across the Australian community, workers in kashrut and otherwise communally involved.

The founding families of the Australian Chabad community landed here in 1949. Amongst them, hosted by Reb Moshe Zalman Feiglin in Shepparton was Reb Zalman Serebryanski who together with Reb Abba Pliskin founded a yeshivah in Shepparton utilising the shule on the Feiglin property. It began on Cheshvan 18, 1949, with three students, expanded somewhat with more boys from Melbourne and Sydney, but in 1951 it moved to Burwood with the hope of capturing more students from the Melbourne community who would not travel to Shepparton to reside there.
However there too the realisation set in that there was much groundwork to be laid before the long-term aim of a real full time yeshivah could be achieved.

1954 saw the yeshivah move from Burwood to 92 Hotham Street, East St Kilda, where Reb Zalman began to operate a day school in addition to providing “after school cheder” classes for those who went to other schools in Melbourne. The late 1950s/early 1960s once again saw a full-time Jewish studies class (the “Kol Hayom”) taught by Reb Eliezer Herzog – himself formerly a Shepparton yeshivah student – but the intent and aim were always clear. The school originally directed by Reb Zalman who would continue as a teacher even as Rabbi Groner came to the school as teacher and then head, was a stepping stone to the ultimate achievement – a full time yeshivah once the first graduates of Yeshivah College had matriculated, which took place at the end of 1965.

And so the commencement of the 1966 academic year saw the Yeshivah Gedolah open its doors. This was no easy achievement. Many in the community felt that after school boys should move to university; even many of those in favour of some higher Jewish study felt that the boys should go overseas rather than study here. And even within the local Chabad community there was a fear that financially those promoting the yeshivah were unrealistic and even endangering the achievement so far – thriving boys’ and girls’ schools. Such attitudes were a repeat of those expressed on previous occasions – expansion of activity beyond then existing institutions was viewed as beyond reality and communal capability.