Entrance Exam to Yeshiva Grodno
Rabbi Shimon Shkop
Occasionally, I publish Hebrew poetry here. This story will do as poetry. It is about Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the lost world. Beats toxic politics by a mile. Although Rabbi Shimon Shkop lived and died through the worst political storm.1
I think that the book תורה יבקש מפיהו is a collection about Rabbi Shkop, so do not know without the book who is the particular author of this memory. The book calls Grodno “Poland”, what a chutzpah. Is Brisk “Poland” too? Even if Brisk and Grodno are border towns, it is Belarus.
Chaim Ozer Grodzinski was born in Iwye, Belarus.
His hevrusa Rabbi Shkop was born Torez, Belarus.
Chaim Brisker, born in Volozhin, technically Belarus.
I keep publishing things that relate to a club I am not a member of. They do not relate to me, and I don’t relate to them. I feel like that about the entire blog. Why do I write and for whom do I write?
Let me tell you a secret. Rabbi Shkop was that personal because Jews did not exactly compete for admission into Yeshiva Grodno. They were busy with Zionism, Communism, and assimilation.
Why do I have to be cynical? I read this story a few times now, and every time tears swell in my eyes. I think I am crying about something else…
הרב שקופ נותר בישיבת שער התורה בגרודנה, ביחד עם קומץ תלמידים, אף לאחר פרוץ מלחמת העולם השנייה, לאחר שרוב התלמידים ברחו לווילנה . ביום ט' בחשוון ת"ש (1939) הספיק הרב שקופ להשמיע דבריו בפני אספת רבני הסביבה שהתכנסו בביתו לבקש מפיו עצה בענייני חינוך, אך נפטר לאחר מכן, באמצע תפילת מנחה, בגיל 80
I am also often annoyed by those Jews who sing the Polish narrative, call all the lands the Poles grabbed after the fall of Czarist and Austrian-Hungarian Empires as "Poland" regardless of the fact the Jews spoke Yiddish and knew enough to know their neighbours were not talking Polish.