Writing the history of the Strasbourg Student Yeshiva firstly poses a problem of terminology. The more we think about this institution, the less we know what term to use to designate those who made the life of the Yeshiva. Are these students, ba’hourim1students of Rav Eliahou or members of an informal community…? Each of these designations describes a part of reality, but none of them can be irrefutably used to designate this same reality as a whole.
In Strasbourg, this problem is avoided by simply speaking of the “people of the Yech”. This terminological difficulty is in no way a simple question of formulation, it expresses all the tension inherent to this institution, this group as well as the mode of study and thought which is specific to it.
The emblematic figure of the Yeshiva of Strasbourg is undoubtedly Rav Eliahou Abitbol. Born in Morocco, he completed his baccalaureate at the Yeshiva of Aix-les-Bains in the 1950s. Founded at the end of the War (1945), this Yeshiva was practically the first institution of Talmudic studies in post-French Revolution France.
Furthermore, Rav Eliahu was also imbued with the more philosophical discourse in vogue at the École d’Orsay, the study center linked to the Éclaireurs Israélites, a Jewish youth movement which played an important catalytic role for Judaism post-war French. During the six months of his stay, it was especially his master Léon Achkenazi who impressed him the most.
The desire of the high school student – then unusual in his environment – to connect Torah and philosophy would permeate the rest of his career. After his baccalaureate, he first wanted to study philosophy. He thus hoped to acquire the intellectual tools that would allow him to express the truth of Judaism in a universal language.
The need to first become familiar with Jewish sources nevertheless ultimately prevailed. He did not go to University but to Israel, to the Yeshiva of Rav Wolbe in Beer Yaakov. He stayed there for five years and spent three more years deepening his knowledge at Kollel Hazon Ich in Bnei Brak.
Even today, Rav Eliahu lives with the idea that he sacrificed his project of studying philosophy to appropriate the Talmud. His interest in confronting great thinkers, from Spinoza to Heidegger, has remained intact.
In the meantime, he had appropriated the Lithuanian method of studying the Talmud, an entirely rationalist system of thought which seemed to him sufficiently powerful to affirm the traditional values of Judaism in the face of the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) ; and he was filled with a compelling desire to import this speech to France.
He had obtained the Semi’ha (rabbinic diploma) in Israel and thus arrived in complete legitimacy in Colle2 of Strasbourg in 1965. This Kollel had only been created two years previously to alleviate the risks of assimilation of Jews from North Africa arriving en masse in France since 1962.
It seems paradoxical, but Rav Eliahou, who was himself originally from Morocco and belonged to an institution which had been created for Sephardic immigrants, was initially only interested in assimilated Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom were Alsatians, but also originally from Eastern Europe for some of them.
Immigrants from North Africa were not his target audience. He knew from experience how great the thirst for Western culture was. Anyone who goes from Mellah to France only dreams of Paris and all their efforts go in the same direction: finding the gateway to Western culture.
From such a perspective, the Torah was only synonymous with intellectual misery and archaism. From Judaism, we only maintained a superstitious traditionalism and a community bond based on ethnic considerations. The Sephardic masses were not interested in Rav Eliahu and he reciprocated them. It was a mutual disinterest.
From his point of view, the Ashkenazim were more willing to listen to him. The encounter with French culture had already taken place several generations ago. In this group, Rav Eliahou could find young people receptive to a reading of traditional texts through the prism of Lithuanian rationalism. In their families, most had known Judaism only as a process of disintegration. Outwardly we still held on to certain customs and certain ceremonies, we did not eat pork, we ate matzah at Passover and we fasted at Yom Kippur. However, all this was not really of any consequence and it was done more out of piety than out of conviction.
When we grew up in such an environment, we were still sufficiently imbued with it so that a feeling of belonging persisted and the point of no return had not yet been reached. If we simultaneously began to doubt Western values, or if a little uneasiness crept into the minds of these students regarding their parents’ way of life, Rav Eliahou’s speech found an attentive ear.
Outwardly we still held on to certain customs and certain ceremonies, we did not eat pork, we ate matzah at Passover and we fasted at Yom Kippur. However, all this was not really of any consequence and it was done more out of piety than out of conviction.
In the fall of 1965, just after his arrival, he began giving evening classes for Jewish students, to which were added Shabbat classes and summer seminars. After two years, he had gathered a sufficiently large and committed group of faithful around him to found, in September 1967, the Yeshiva of Students of France.
Rav Eliahu left the Colle and decided to devote himself solely to students. He could count on the help of Rav Klapisch whom he knew from Beer Yaakov. The Yeshiva obtained its first premises in a student apartment on rue des Halberdes which was filled with Ständer and beds. But we quickly felt cramped in the two bedrooms of this apartment. Just a few months later, at the beginning of 1968, the Yeshiva moved to a larger apartment on Boulevard de la Victoire, right next to the main University building. Rav Gabriel Toledano then joined the Yeshiva. Like Rav Eliahou, he passed his baccalaureate in Aix-les-Bains then studied in a Yeshiva in Israel. Rav Toledano became the Talmud teacher of those who, among Rav Eliahou’s followers, had decided to stop their university studies to devote themselves solely to Limoud. However, he left Strasbourg after a few years and returned to Israel. In 1970, the Yeshiva had to change address again. She then moved into the building on Allée Spach, at the foot of the Council of Europe, where she is still located today.
It is difficult to quantify the “effect” produced by the Yeshiva, but the expansion of the successive premises as well as the expansion of the teaching staff are indications of successful development.
Within the Yeshiva, a core of highly motivated young men had been formed. Among them were Jean-Jacques Levy, Sim Bloch, Daniel Epstein, Sam Gottfarstein, Guy Spingarn, Alain Levy, Henry Kahn and Alain Kaufman. These names alone clearly illustrate the purely Ashkenazi character of the first group of students.
Under the influence of Rav Eliahu, most of them abrogated their university studies or put their professional careers on hold to devote several years of their lives solely to the study of the Talmud.
The radicality with which these upheavals took place was highly contested. She did not correspond to the traditional conceptions of the Jewish establishment. It worried the parents, in particular because it jeopardized the financial subsistence of those concerned.
Rav Eliahou, however, has reason to be proud of those who have made Limoud their reason for being…: a good number of the students mentioned above have become renowned teachers within French-speaking Judaism.
The Yeshiva in Strasbourg, however, was not only made up of those who studied there full-time. We constantly found people there who studied intensively while following their studies at the University or worked at a job at the same time.
It is interesting to note that two kinds of professions predominated there: doctors and teachers. Alongside them were also a few traders or accountants, but representatives of other professions usually practiced by Jews were missing: neither artists, nor scientists, nor lawyers or journalists wanted to form a lasting attachment – in any significant quantity – to the community of the Yeshiva.
The more the profession was supported by a certain “world vision”, the more the articulation of professional life and Limoud would lead to a split existence that was difficult to bear.
The life stories of the Yeshiva circle show that sooner or later a decision had to be made. If Limoud became a serious business and was accompanied by a real commitment, professional interest was then reduced to strict food concerns (parnassa). If the profession was conceived as a vocation, Limoud found itself reduced to a luxury hobby. For a community which established Limoud as an essential value and was not content with an orthopraxy, the concept of Torah im-right-right must have remained a pipe dream.
Under the influence of Rav Eliahu, most students abrogated their university studies or put their professional careers on hold to devote several years of their lives solely to the study of the Talmud.
Those who, over the years, have joined the Yeshiva unanimously attest that it is not the practice of mitzvot, but the world of Talmudic study that they discovered there. When the exclusive study of the Talmud proved impossible, we fell back on a profession which would encroach as little as possible on the essential. In this case, it is not simply a question of a difference in content, but also in the time devoted to these secular occupations. To this end, the professions of teacher or doctor were best suited to those who wanted to devote a significant amount of time to Limoud while skillfully juggling their professional schedule without their income suffering disproportionately.
Most of Rav Eliahou’s students having already embarked on a very different professional path, it became urgent to adapt these started paths to the new demands of the passion for Limoud. The simplest way to scale back ambitious and potentially fulfilling professional projects has often been to transform scientific or artistic vocations into teaching professions.
Other forms of convergence of interest have nevertheless also emerged. This is how, for example, in 1980 a series of medical theses were defended in which it was mainly a question of evaluating the ethical value of modern scientific advances through the prism of Jewish tradition: contraception, abortion, assisted reproduction, organ donation, transplants, etc.3.
With this work, Rav Eliahou’s students were able to demonstrate to the academic public how fruitful the confrontation of the most modern societal questions with traditional Jewish texts could be. The choice of these themes also allowed them to share their Limoud with the energy invested in these end-of-study projects.
However, such practical solutions could not be developed every time. It has happened that dedication to the Torah comes at the cost of a significant professional sacrifice. Generally speaking, the greater the distance accomplished by the newcomer to the Yeshiva, the greater the feeling of success and pride.
Rav Eliahu’s greatest strength lay in his art of recruitment. Like no other, he knew how to exploit the insurrectional atmosphere of the student movement of May 68.
Apart from the Talmud classes, meal debates were organized at the Cité Laure Weil, the premises of Jewish students in Strasbourg, and had as their theme the relationship between Judaism and Revolution, Marxism, Trotskyism, etc.
Unlike well-established Jewish institutions, Rav Eliahu did not fear contact with Jewish revolutionaries and even their support for the Palestinian cause did not constitute an obstacle for him. He himself only considered Zionism as one of the idols of a Jewish Modernity that had to be entirely called into question. The urgency to rethink all the fundamentals of life to which this rebellious youth aspired was something he could seize.
Even more, he found in the language of the Revolution the same radicality and the absence of preconceived ideas which seemed to him to be characteristic of the Talmudic power, such as he had known it in Bnei-Brak.
Unlike well-established Jewish institutions, Rav Eliahu did not fear contact with Jewish revolutionaries and even their support for the Palestinian cause did not constitute an obstacle for him.
From 1968 to today (1998), Rav Eliahou’s success is based above all on the fact that he never wanted to deliver ready-made truths to his audience.
All the work of his very long courses aims only to develop a questioning. He doesn’t want to make things smoother, he wants to give them back all their roughness. He does everything possible to avoid an easy and rapid reading of texts. He refuses to hear simple answers and even more so to give them. His universe is that of paradox, which is difficult to grasp. The essence of his work consists of destroying all the certainties acquired at minimal cost. This is what always led him to dialogue with the Left.
These contacts went far beyond the strict framework of May 68: in the 1970s, Rav Eliahou became closer to the Cercle Gaston Crémieux. After a first conference, he went every fortnight to Paris to give Talmud classes and continued this, later, in Maoist circles. Such meetings and courses then took place in other cities, in Nancy, Lyon, Besançon and Brussels. A period during which Rav Eliahu never stopped traveling. Everywhere he went, he gained new recruits and the Yeshiva then truly became a project aimed at the entire French-speaking world. Over time, students from countries where English, German, Russian or Spanish were spoken gathered there and the Yeshiva even became a stopping point for certain Israeli emigrants.
With Benny Levy, it was the leading figure of the far left who arrived at the Yeshiva in 1984. Not only had he been, for years, the legendary leader of the Maoist-inspired Proletarian Left, but as personal secretary and collaborator of Sartre, he was crowned with the prestige of the great philosopher. It seemed as if Sartre himself had just landed at the Yeshiva and his arrival had a considerable public impact. A three-page article devoted to the molt of Benny Levy appeared in Libération. The American Jewish Newspaper Commentary published a long interview with the person concerned. All of Strasbourg was proud of this rise in notoriety; whether we were in favor or against it, this media success left no one indifferent. It was also an event for the Yeshiva community. Everyone had more or less sympathized with Left movements. Even if only a minority was really actively involved, everyone had already participated in one or the other demonstration. In fact, when Benny Levy joined the Yeshiva, they looked like simple soldiers standing at attention in front of the general reviewing his troops. Many people saw this event as a justification for their own life choices.
At the Yeshiva, there was no question of strict regulations. Rav Eliahu understood that the total absence of coercion led much more effectively to a personal metamorphosis than a petty exercise of control and influence. Externally, anarchy reigned at the Yeshiva. Even for daily prayers, this apparent neglect was in truth the consequence of a completely deliberate choice. It was impossible for anything relating to ritual and formalism to occupy too important a place. The only essential requirement had to remain that of Limoud.
Rav Eliahu did everything he could to obtain complete independence for his Limoud. He felt any form of integration into an institutional framework as unbearable asphyxiation. In its beginnings, the Yeshiva was supported by the Community of Strasbourg and the Unified Jewish Social Fund. But after a few years, he managed to develop his own financing system. Rav Eliahou managed to explain to public services that the Yeshiva provided a sort of continuing education, namely that the in-depth study of the Talmud could have beneficial consequences on the exercise of the profession of doctor or teacher. The Institute of Training and Cultural Animation (IFAC) was founded and henceforth the financing of the Yeshiva was ensured by public funds.
Even if Rav Eliahu thus managed not to depend on well-established Jewish institutions, it would be unfair to see him as one of their enemies. He certainly did everything possible not to be personally subjected to community politics, but there was never any question of attacking the established power head-on or trying to destroy it. This is how he differs from any kind of Left activism. Independence was enough, there was no counter-project to put forward by violence or trickery.
Externally, anarchy reigned in the Yeshiva. It was impossible for anything relating to ritual and formalism to occupy too important a place. The only essential requirement had to remain that of Limoud.
This positioning later allowed some of his students to occupy key positions in the teaching staff of the Jewish community of Strasbourg. The effect of the Yeshiva on consistorial Judaism went beyond even this framework. Many personalities of the French rabbinate studied for a certain time with Rav Eliahu. Among these, the Grand Rabbi of Metz, Marc-Olivier Guedj, the Grand Rabbi of Lyon, Richard Werthenschlag and, last but not least, the Grand Rabbi of France Joseph Sitruk.
Rav Eliahou distrusts power and its institutional structures; it would be impossible for him to take on such functions. He not only distrusts the power of others, he distrusts power as such, including his own.
Over time, the student Yeshiva has in turn become institutionalized and it is easy to understand why this model has become widespread. Students from Rav Eliahou’s inner circle exported the model to other cities: Alain Levy in Toulouse, Guy Spingarn in Lyon, Gerard Zyzek in Paris. But we would be fooling ourselves to think that these branches were remotely controlled from Strasbourg, as Rav Eliahou loathes institutional power. Each of these extension projects was the fruit of personal initiatives and individual abilities to build relationships on site, even if the Yeshiva of Strasbourg continued to serve as a model of inspiration. The desire to emerge from the shadow of the master after long years of study was at least as strong as the desire to imitate him.
Over time a new problem arose: those who had returned home knew nothing outside of the student Yeshiva. The more time they spent studying and delving into the Talmud, the more they yearned to travel to Israel and discover the classical Talmudic institutions of which they had heard so much.
Almost all those who decided to dedicate themselves entirely to Limoud spent several years in Israel to deepen their knowledge and broaden their horizons. Some, like Alain Kaufmann, Daniel Epstein or Henry Kahn, have managed to establish themselves there permanently. Alain Kaufmann has in the meantime published a commentary on the Hafets Hayim and Henry Kahn has been publishing the review for many years Kountrass.
Most, however, returned. Their departure had thrown the Yeshiva into a crisis at the beginning of the 1970s. The first group of students had followed Rav Gabriel Toledano to Israel in 1972 and it was only with the return of some of them from 1975 that the Yeshiva experienced a new momentum.
Almost all those who decided to dedicate themselves entirely to Limoud spent several years in Israel to deepen their knowledge and broaden their horizons.
From this moment on, the development of the Yeshiva took a stormy course in which, unlike the first phase, students from North Africa also participated.
The Yeshiva had become a center of intellectual life. The blemish of cultural backwardness no longer tainted the Torah; on the contrary, it was now a matter of catching up as quickly as possible in terms of Torah and Mitzvot.
Women played an important role in this regard. Especially during the first years, only single young men arrived at the Yeshiva, couples were only welcomed later. When the ba’hourim had acquired the fundamentals and had shown a certain stability in their desire to put into practice what they had learned, it was necessary to find them a wife. Rav Eliahu managed in most cases to find wives for his students from more traditional families than those of their husbands. Each time, the chidou’h4 in question led to a further rapprochement of the world of Torah and contributed to the strengthening of the return (techouva) started at the Yeshiva. Such marriages were revealing signs of the success of the work undertaken by Rav Eliahu.
With the arrival of women in the Yeshiva environment, courses were also organized for them, although certainly not in as intense a manner and on the same scale as the courses for men. Initially these courses still took place in private homes and were taught in turn by particularly learned husbands. Later, Rav Eliahu organized a fixed course every fortnight for women and they also always had the possibility of attending the mixed course on Shabbat morning.
Overall, these courses were dependent on her personal inspiration of the moment and did not respond to a real desire to transmit to these women the tools to acquire autonomy in confronting the texts. For women who had previously played an active role in far-left circles, this situation was difficult to accept.
There were periodic attempts to organize Talmud classes for women, but these attempts were unsuccessful.
After the women came the children. A large number of them were born and the question of their schooling quickly arose. The parents of the Yeshiva community had not succeeded in influencing or changing the Jewish school system then in place to the point of recognizing themselves in it. It is precisely regarding the educational question that the unique positioning of the Yeshiva became a vital problem. The teaching of Jewish subjects in Jewish schools was considered either too superficial or too authoritarian.
This is how in 1981 a school from the Yeshiva was founded, the Tachbar school. The direction was entrusted to Yonathan Lilti who had already been part of the Yeshiva for almost ten years.
The Strasbourg Student Yeshiva had become a respectable institution. What would have brought a sense of pride and accomplishment to others, proved to be a burden for Rav Eliahu. The progressive institutionalization of his intellectual research did not fit with his fundamentally anarchist character.
The school was entirely private, without any financial support from the state. Four hours a day were devoted to religious teachings and two to the national education program. The children spoke informally to their teachers and only secular subjects were subject to graded assessments. The project was that of an alternative education, consistent with Jewish life in the full sense of the term.
With all these families, the Yeshiva gradually transformed into an informal community. The cohesion of the group no longer depended solely on the convergence around the charismatic personality of Rav Eliahu, nor on the common experience of emerging from assimilation. From now on, family ties formed the cement of the whole. By the chidou’him established by Rav Eliahou, two or three large families ended up making up the bulk of the Yeshiva.
The Yeshiva no longer formed just an aggregate of a few ba’hourim isolated, but a community in its own right which included around a hundred households. Yesterday’s twenty-year-old students had become forty-year-old doctors.
The Strasbourg Student Yeshiva had become a respectable institution. What would have brought a sense of pride and accomplishment to others, proved to be a burden for Rav Eliahu. The progressive institutionalization of his intellectual research did not fit with his fundamentally anarchist character. The Return community he had created was on the verge of establishing itself permanently in his home. This stabilization was unbearable for him, he felt locked in his own institution.
In 1991 there was an implosion of the Yeshiva-turned-community. A considerable number of his students created their own Beit-Hamidrash three streets away. After years of internal procrastination, most of them had returned to Judaism under the influence of Rav Eliahu. Now, they wanted to calmly continue to deepen their knowledge. They needed a place and a structure to study, compatible with their professional and family obligations.
However, it is in recruitment that Rav Eliahou excels. What interests him are people who are already fairly assimilated, having experienced a hollow traditional Judaism, and to bring them back towards a serious reappropriation of the Torah and the Mitzvot. To do this he needs to “rub up” to the outside world and he needs time and strength to devote himself to these new arrivals. He conceived the Yeshiva as a place to pass through, not a place to stay. What he wants is to convince, to gain followers…; their departure is already planned in advance.
Basically, the Yeshiva of Strasbourg students remained the project of a single generation, that of a Jewish form of student revolt, the study of the Talmud occupying the function of insurrection against the Establishment.
Each individual who joined this community did so by personal choice, no one was sent there by their parents. No destiny has unfolded there according to a pre-established pattern. Entrance to the Yeshiva most of the time took place independently of family traditions and often even in opposition to the expectations of the original environment. Of course, the convergence of so many singular desires had to be driven by a particular impulse. At the Yeshiva there were people who wanted to collectively experience their individual choice of return.
This is perhaps also what explains the fervor, the passionate side of the festivals which took place there. It was only later, in the second generation, that routine and professionalization began to pose a problem.
For the children of the Yeshiva, the Torah and the Mitzvot had in turn become well-established values. What was still an act of rebellion and emancipation for their parents had become obedience and subjugation for them. The discovery of the Talmud was no longer their lot, they could only hope to go further in its mastery.
It is here that the attempt to write the ongoing history of the Yeshiva comes to an end. It is already daring to want to make History with events that are still very present in the minds of those who were contemporary with them. It would be presumptuous to speculate on the future developments of the Yeshiva. The Yeshiva still exists, its history remains largely unfinished.
Perhaps, as so often, it is only at the end that the true meaning of the beginning will be revealed.
This text – based on interviews with Rav Eliahou Abitbol, Pierrot Elleb, Sam Gottfarstein, Philippe Kanter, Jean-Jacques Levy, Yonathan Lilti, Alain Recht and Pierre Wolff – was first published in 1998 by Peter Honigmann, under the title “The Yeshiva of Strasbourg Students (1967-1998). For a reappropriation of the Torah and mitzvot in the contemporary era » in the magazine Jewish Romania.
Translated from German by Ruben Honigmann.
- Young men. ↩︎
- Talmudic research center for married men. ↩︎
- Sebag, Albert: Problems with induced abortions in Jewish tradition. Strasbourg. Med. 1980; Bauer, Jean-Claude: Problems raised by contraception and interventions on the urogenital sphere according to Jewish tradition. Strasbourg. Med. 1981; Lienhart, Jacques : Problems posed by autopsies in the Jewish tradition. Strasbourg. Méd. 1983 ; Botbol, Elie : Jewish ethics and organ transplantation. Strasbourg. Méd. 1985 ; Sellam, Alain : Jewish ethical aspects of medically assisted procreation through a Talmudic reading. Thèse présentée à l’Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1. Médecine, 1988 ; Bouaniche, Henri : Maimonides – Towards a redefinition of the healthy man. Strasbourg. Méd. 1990. ↩︎
- Meet the organization. ↩︎
