Yeshiva (Talmudic Higher Education Institution)

High School of the Sages - Yeshiva Chachmej Lublin

At the first world congress of the Orthodox ‚Agudath Israel World Organization‘ (AIWO) in Vienna on August 16, 1923, the prominent Polish Hasidic rabbi Meir Shapiro (Majer Jehuda Szapira) presented his basic idea, developed long before, of founding a modern Talmudic high school. The suggestion was taken up by the Congress and Lublin was chosen as the site because of its long tradition of rabbinical seminaries (foundation stone laid in 1924). The College of the Sages (Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin) was opened in 1930.

The rabbi of the Destrikt Rabbinate of Würzburg, Nathan Bamberger, led the teacher training college since 1878.  

The Berlin-based Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (HWJ) existed as an academic research and study institution from 1872 to 1942. Its purpose was to enable students of all faiths to conduct impartial research on Judaism.

For the summer semester 1930/31, 109 regular students were counted and the library comprised about 55,000, later even 60,000 books. Rabbi Nathan Peter Levinson was one of the last students (along with Leo Trepp and Leo Baeck). In an obituary for one of his teachers, he writes: