Pupils of One of the Most Famous Jewish Religious Schools, the Mir Yeshiva in Shanghai

Founded in 1815 in the small town of Mir in the Russian Empire, on the territory of present-day Belarus, the Mir Yeshiva played a key role in the development of Jewish religious education. And although the word Mir still stands in its name, the school, which was known as the yeshiva of yeshivas, left Belarus, first during the First World War, for Poltava, then returned for a short time, until the measured 1920s and 1930s, years of prosperity and worldwide recognition, proved to be only a brief respite between the world wars.

In 1939 the yeshiva moved to Vilna, in 1940 to Japan, and in 1941 to Shanghai, where it remained until 1947. If Vilna was an expected and nearby refuge from persecution both from the west and from the east, the sudden turn towards Japan came as a surprise. Yet in a Europe that was smouldering and humming with the noise of marching parades, there was by then nowhere left to hide. The move itself involved a chain of gripping events: the issuing of several hundred Japanese visas to the entire community of the yeshiva, which first had to cross the Soviet Union to the Far East, is reason enough...

In the post-war years the Mir Yeshiva split in two: one part ended up in Brooklyn, the other in Jerusalem.