Tomchei Temimim

Central yeshiva network of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, founded in Lubavitch in 1897 by the fifth Rebbe; driven underground in the Soviet Union, moved to Poland and then New York, and now a worldwide system of Chabad yeshivas

Tomchei Temimim
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Established	15 Elul 5657 (12 September 1897), according to Chabad sources
Type	Yeshiva (Talmud and Chabad Hasidism)
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Tomchei Temimim (Hebrew, "supporters of the complete"; also spelled Tomchei Tmimim or Tomekhei Temimim) is the central yeshiva of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and the name of the network of Chabad yeshivas that grew out of it. It was founded in the town of Lubavitch in 1897 by the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, and run from 1898 by his son, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. Its students, the temimim, were taught Talmud together with Chabad Hasidic philosophy. The yeshiva fled the First World War, was suppressed and driven underground by the Soviet authorities, was re-founded in Warsaw and Otwock, scattered again in 1939 and was re-established in New York in 1940. Its graduates supplied the emissaries, ritual slaughterers and teachers on whom the movement's Soviet underground and later its worldwide expansion depended.

Founding in Lubavitch

Chabad's own account, by Mordechai Rubin on Chabad.org, dates the founding to 15 Elul 5657 (12 September 1897), "two days after the wedding" of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, when Shalom Dovber Schneersohn "convened a gathering of prominent rabbis and announced the opening of a new yeshivah". About a year later, on 24 Elul 5658 (11 September 1898), "Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was appointed dean", and on the following Simchat Torah the Rebbe gave it its name: "Now I am calling it Tomchei Temimim (supporters of the complete)." Levin's Kehot history also dates the founding to 15 Elul 5657. Osipova gives 1897 and records that a first branch was opened in Zembin, near Minsk, in the year that Yosef Yitzchak took charge. Rubin writes that the main campus was at first in Zembin and that "By the year 1905, the division in Zembin had closed."

Fishkoff calls it "Chabad's first yeshiva system" and says that "The Tomchei Tmimim schools were a new phenomenon in Jewish life, a place where boys learned, along with the Talmud, mystical teachings and practices". According to Rubin, the Rebbe "felt that in the current climate, studying Chassidic texts was integral to the very survival of the Jewish people", so Hasidic study was made part of the curriculum rather than left to the student.

The yeshiva was also given a combative purpose. Zelenina, summarising Friedman, writes that it was founded in competition with the Haskalah, secularisation, the Volozhin-type mitnaged yeshivas and the revolutionary and Zionist movements, and that "its students were called soldiers of the rebbe's army and were expected to fight the enemies of Hasidism — that is, the enemies of Judaism and of God". Ehrlich discusses the same military imagery in the Rashab's writings.

Editor's note: Fishkoff dates the founding to 1896. The Chabad sources, Levin, Osipova and Zelenina all give 1897 (15 Elul 5657), and that date is used here.

Wartime flight and the Soviet period

In October 1915, with the German army approaching, Shalom Dovber Schneersohn left Lubavitch for Rostov-on-Don. According to the Chabad.org history, the yeshiva "stayed in Lubavitch for an additional two years or so, finally leaving in 1918", and moved first to Kremenchug. On the Rebbe's death in 1920 his will told his son to "take care regarding the yeshivah Tomchei Temimim". Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn moved it to Rostov, where it ran until the summer of 1921, when, Rubin writes, "The Communist regime shuttered the yeshivah, the faculty was arrested, the students expelled from the city and the property confiscated." (Chabad-side.)

After that the yeshiva survived as a scattered network. Osipova, who worked from OGPU–NKVD case files, lists underground branches in Berdichev, Nevel, Leningrad, Vitebsk, Kyiv, Poltava, Polotsk, Kherson and Bukhara ("подпольные отделения иешивы «Томхей тмимим»"). A 2017 Chabad.org report says that after 1917 the yeshiva broke up "into dozens of branches in cities and towns throughout the Soviet Union—from Kremenchug to Voronezh, Berdichev to Kursk", which "were usually shut down by authorities or closed on their own when pressure became too harsh". One branch, at Malakhovka near Moscow, lasted from 1934 to 1935 and ended with a police raid. Zaltzman's memoir records that in the 1920s "the central Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim relocated" to Kharkov.

Heilman and Friedman describe how Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn sent "his devoted students from the Tomekhei Temimim yeshiva" across the Soviet Union: "Often they came in the role of shokhtim, ritual slaughterers of kosher meat", which gave them an income, and "In time they would also set up a network of schools for the teaching of Torah and ChaBaD Hasidism." This network made the Rebbe "a man who controlled an important network within the new Soviet Union". It brought him into conflict with the Yevsektsiya and the OGPU. In 1927 he was arrested, and the indictment accused him of illegally organising chadarim and yeshivas.

During the Second World War Chabad Hasidim who fled to Central Asia took the yeshiva with them. Zaltzman writes that "the underground Tomchei Temimim yeshiva followed them into exile", and that in the war years it "flourished" in Samarkand and Tashkent because the police were preoccupied with the war. After 1945 the yeshiva left with the Lubavitchers who escaped the USSR, "to a large DP camp in Poking, Germany, and then to Brunoy, France". Small groups in the Soviet Union went on studying in its tradition, so that, in Zaltzman's words, "the learning of Tomchei Temimim never completely ceased to exist in Russia." (Chabad-side memoir.)

Warsaw, Otwock and the Second World War

A branch opened in Warsaw on 2 Nissan 5681 (10 April 1921), the first anniversary of the fifth Rebbe's death; Chabad dates it as the first branch outside Russia. After his release and expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1927, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn eventually settled in Poland. The yeshiva and the Rebbe moved to Otwock, near Warsaw. Rubin gives the year as 1936; Heilman and Friedman date the court's move to Otwock to 1935. Chabad describes the Warsaw and Otwock years as "a new golden period in the history of Tomchei Temimim".

The German invasion of 1939 scattered the yeshiva again. According to Chabad.org, students escaped via Riga and Vilna, and many reached Shanghai by way of Japan. There they spent the rest of the war and set up a printing press. The sixth Rebbe himself was rescued from Warsaw and reached New York in March 1940.

New York and the network today

Fishkoff writes that when Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn moved Chabad operations to New York in March 1940, "he immediately opened a yeshiva for young men", which at first had "barely two dozen students, many from orthodox but non-Lubavitch families". Within ten years he had "laid the foundation for what was to become the largest Hasidic educational operation in the country". Chabad.org's founder, Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, had his "regular job in the United Lubavitch Yeshivah" before he moved to the internet full-time.

Under Menachem Mendel Schneerson the network spread worldwide. Chabad.org says that it "spawned many branches worldwide and has educated tens of thousands of students", and can be found "across the Americas, Europe, Israel, and even in Africa and Australia". In Israel there is a Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim at Kfar Chabad, which Berger calls "the major Lubavitch centre in Israel". In Moscow, a Yeshivah Gedola Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch was started around 1987, first in the Choral Synagogue and the Marina Roshcha synagogue. Chabad says that hundreds of its alumni now serve as rabbis in the former Soviet Union, Germany, Israel and the United States.

Messianism

After the seventh Rebbe's death in 1994, some Tomchei Temimim staff were among the messianist voices documented by the critic David Berger. He cites a catechism quoting Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Ginsberg, "a mashpia in Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim in Kfar Chabad, the major Lubavitch centre in Israel", who wrote that the Rebbe's "true physical life continues with precisely the same force as before". Berger also writes that "The head of Tomchei Temimim, another major men's yeshiva in Crown Heights, signed a messianist approbation to a major messianist book published in 1999, and a mentor there participated in its preparation." (Critical source.) See Chabad messianism.

Editor's note: Berger himself questions the provenance of the Ginsberg catechism, which quotes a volume he calls a "phantom" (pp. 98–99). No independent count of Tomchei Temimim branches or students today was found. The figures above are Chabad's own. The early history rests mainly on Chabad-side sources (Chabad.org, Levin, Zaltzman). Osipova's book was published with Chabad support, but it draws on Soviet case files. Chabad.org gives the date of the sixth Rebbe's arrival in America as "the 9th of Adar 5700 (18 February, 1940)". US court records date his arrival to 19 March 1940, which corresponds to 9 Adar II 5700, so the Chabad.org Gregorian date appears to be a conversion error.

See also

• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
• Shalom Dovber Schneersohn
• Chabad-Lubavitch timeline
• Chabad messianism
• Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch
• Kfar Chabad