Place
Bnei Brak בני ברק
The town where the yeshiva world of Eastern Europe gathered again after the war — on a site named after the city of the Mishnah.
The settlement was founded in 1924 by Polish Hasidim and named in memory of the Bnei Brak of the Mishnah — the city of Rabbi Akiva that the Passover Haggadah speaks of. Ancient Bnei Brak stood nearby.
After the war the surviving heads of yeshivas moved here, and within a generation the town became what pre-war Lithuania had been: yeshivas, Hasidic courts, publishing houses. The Chazon Ish lived here, and both rabbis and Ben-Gurion came to him for decisions; the Ponevezh and Slabodka lines settled here too.
On the timeline
5706 · 1946 CERebuilding after the War: DP Camps and New Yeshivot5700 · 1940 CEThe Rescue of the Mir Yeshiva: Vilna, Kobe, Shanghai5708 · 1948 CEThe Declaration of the State of Israel
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Pesachim 49a — Rabbi Akiva and the sages reclining in Bnei Brak — the city this one is named for
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Chazon Ish, Orach Chaim — the rulings people came here for from across the country
Basis: documents and evidence.