Today’s Yahrtzeits & History- 28 Teves

Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, Rosh Yeshiva of Mir in Brooklyn (1921-2008). Born in the small Polish-Lithuanian town of Kinishen, Reb Shmuel began his formal learning at Yeshiva Ohel Torah of Baranovitch in 1935 under the leadership of Rav Elchonon Wasserman. During his years in the Mirrer Yeshiva, he became very close with the famed Mashgiach of the Mir, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein. Rav Shmuel escaped from Europe together with the Mirrer Yeshiva and spent six years with the yeshiva in exile in Shanghai. He arrived in the United States with the yeshiva led by the mashgiach, Rav Chatzkel, in 1947, and continued to learn in the yeshiva. In the early 1950s, Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz, who had sustained and saved the yeshiva in Shanghai and rebuilt it in America , took Rav Shmuel as a son-in-law. After his marriage, Rav Shmuel joined the kollel of the Mirrer Yeshiva. In 1964, with the passing of Rav Kalmanowitz, Rav Shraga Moshe Kalmanowitz, oldest son of Rav Avraham,
together with Rav Shmuel, became roshei yeshiva of the Mirrer Yeshiva.

Today in History – 28 Teves

· Rav Shimon ben Shetach was able to rid the Sanhedrin of its Tzaduki members. The day was subsequently celebrated as a holiday.
· Jewish mourners were attacked at a funeral in Egypt, 1012.
· Jews of Switzerland were granted civic equality upon pressure exerted by the United States which had interceded on behalf of American Jewish citizens, 1866.
· “Kastner trial” opens in Yerushalayim District Court, 1954. (Malkiel Gruenwald was sued for libeling Dr. Rudolf Kastner regarding his alleged collaboration with Adolf Eichmann in Hungary, in 1944 but evidence proved Gruenwald right).

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