(Click HERE for photos of the devastating damage) Early Monday morning the Miami Beach Community Kollel experienced an apparent arson attack. When Balle Battim arrived at about 6:00AM this morning to attend Rabbi Zvi Neuhaus’s early Gemara Shiur, they were quite a surprised to find the Kollel building filled with smoke.
They called the Miami Beach fire department which subsequently found not one, but two separate fires in different parts of the building – including one on the bima in the bais Medrash!
The Kollel is still assessing the extent of the damage but there B”H does not appear to be any major structural damage. The Sefrei Torah are kept in a fire proof safe and are all ok. The Kollel’s Bais medrash suffered the greatest damage and is not usable.
Until further notice all davening and shiurim will be held in other rooms.
Detectives are investigating the incident.
(Click HERE to view the Bais Medrash as it used to look.)
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6 Responses
I am a New Yorker who just spent Succos in Miami Beach. Our family utilized the Kollel alot as many others have too. We had an uplifting and great Simchas Torah there and I just davened Mincha there yesterday before departing back to New York.Sad sad story.What would Miami Beach be without Rabbi Gross and “The Kollel”??
Donations can be sent to:
Miami Beach Community Kollel
3767 Chase Ave
Miami Beach, FL 33140
From the OU website:
The Miami beach Community Kollel is a Torah full time kollel with 10 kollel-rabbis devoted to contributing Torah study opportunities and leadership for Miami’s Jewish community. The Kollel offers a variety of programs for children and adults of all Jewish backgrounds. In addition to regular daily and weekly classes the Kollel’s extensive libraries and Bais Medrash (study-hall) are available throughout the day. There is no charge or membership requirements for any of the Kollel’s services. Tourists and visitors to Miami Beach are always welcome The Kollel also has regular Davening 7 days a week, all year long.
“Think straight”, good call posting the address, for all those Miami beach vacationers who make use of this makom torah & tefilah while on vacation its time to do more then hock about what happened, there are so many of us and its time to help out, and don’t mumble about insurance, considering how many guests that place services a year it should look alot better then it does and frankly needed an overall anyway, so pull out that checkbook or log on to your online banking bill pay, even 18 bucks from every OTHER Jew that benefited from the kollel would be amazing.
The fire at the Kollel is devestating not only to the Miami Beach
community, but also to the many tourists who make use of the Kollel’s facilities. Even those of us who are not participants in the many shiurim the kollel offers to the community, do make use of the bais medrish, the early minchah and late maariv the kollel offers each day. All of us certainly owe hakaras hatov (and should donate) to Rabbi Gross and the Kollel. That being said, I find it sad that people would use this tragic event to further their agenda and insult the Miami Beach community at large. The implication in a comment like “what would Miami Beach be without Rabbi Gross and the Kollel” is that Miami Beach would be nothing without it. This simply is not true. Baruch Hashem, Miami Beach has many shuls and instututions of learning including the newly renovated Jewish Learning Center, and Yeshiva V’Kollel Beis Moshe Chaim (Rav Yochanan Zweig’s yeshiva).
With all due respect to comment # 4, I disagree with your interpretation of comment # 1. “What would Miami Beach be without Rabbi Gross and the Kollel” was probably not meant as a slur on Chabad, Talmudic University, or any of the other fine institutions that exist in Miami Beach. I don’t think that the implication is “that Miami Beach would be nothing without it.” Rather my interpretation of comment # 1 is simply the following. The Kollel, both as an institution as well as a group of ehriliche yungerleit, have made Miami Beach a different place today than the Miami Beach of a decade ago. While this does not mitigate the accomplishments of other institutions, since the Kollel is the entity that has been seriously damaged by this terrible act of arson, they are the institution we are discussing. I don’t look at this as an “insult to the Miami community,” but rather a well deserved praise for a fine institution undergoing a great difficulty. May the Miami Beach community, together with the world-wide Jewish community be zoche to be brought together with simchas, and not divided with animosity.
In response to comment #5 – I hope you are right