7 - The Last Years of the Volozhin Yeshiva

Summary

IN THE 1880s and 1890s the Volozhin yeshiva found itself in difficult circumstances. Its finances were catastrophic, its relations with the Jewish community at large were deteriorating, and it faced many calls for farreaching structural changes in the institution. There was also an internal split over the question of R. Berlin's successor, as will be described in the next chapter. These challenges did not significantly change the atmosphere of the yeshiva, though the increasing importance of student societies was a noteworthy development. By surveying these organizations and other aspects of student life in the last years of the Volozhin yeshiva and giving a careful look at the finances of the yeshiva it is possible to come to some important insights into the changing realities of yeshiva life during these critical years.

Welfare and Aid Societies

During the latter years of the nineteenth century, the attitudes, interests, patterns of behaviour, and plans for the future of the students at Volozhin changed significantly. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but one of the consequences was the strengthening of student societies.

When new types of organizations appear, they are often a response to new circumstances. In Volozhin the main factor in the sudden appearance of an entire range of organizations seems to have been the sense that an organized body could solve problems better than individual initiatives or ad hoc groups. However, there were additional consequences to this development. Student societies reinforced the students’ collective identity, reduced their dependence on the yeshiva, and made it easier for them to present their demands. The phenomenon seems to have been influenced by the contemporary practice in the wider society of establishing organizations to achieve political, social, and economic change. The student societies in Volozhin, however, aimed less at political change than at dealing with students’ daily needs, welfare, and providing charitable assistance.

A charitable society seems to have come into existence in the early 1880s; a source from 1886 records that there was a ‘room for the gemaḥ [an association that loaned money to students against a pledge] founded by the students about four years ago (the local inhabitants take no part in this charitable work) to provide money for students in need’.