(Click HERE for photos) As part of a muti-city trip on behalf of Torah Vodaath, Harav Shmuel Dishon  shlita, a talmid of the yeshiva and presently Menahel of Mosdos Yad Yisroel- Karlin Stolin, came to Los Angeles to attend a reception for the Yeshiva hosted by Mr. & Mrs. Barry Weiss.

On Wednesday evening July 16th, Rabbanim, Baale Batim and friends of the Yeshiva 
attended this special reception which represented a show of support recognizing 90 years of torah leadership in America.

Harav Dishon described how in the early years Reb Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz, zt”l approached  the local Jewish community and asked them to send their children to the Yeshivah.  Their response was not the desired one. “Reb Shraga,“ he was told,  “what you are trying to do will not happen. It will not happen here in America.”

And Reb Mendelovitz replied, ”Yes it will. I believe it and I know it.”
He quoted to the them pasuk in yirmiyahu. “lech-teich acharei bamidbar b’eretz lo zaruah”   “You followed after Me in the desert, through a land not planted.”
 
The pasuk says a desert, why the repetition by saying “a land not planted?”
A midbar is eretz lo zaru. Why repeat it? To which he answered, “some people see a midbar, a desert, as a desolate and empty place with no possibility of growth. Others just see a desert as a land that is  “lo zarua, not planted.”
Those who see a midbar do not have the courage to plant, and the land stays a midbar a desert. But I see America only as a land that is lo zaru, not planted yet and that if we plant even in this torah desert of America things (torah) can grow.”
 
Rav Dishon concluded by saying, “We see today that America is an eretz zarua, a land that is planted, with baruch hashem, many yeshivos and many mekomei torah.”
These accomplishments occurred only because of the amuna of people like Rav Mendelovitz, zt”l, who believed torah had a place in America and all we had to do was plant it.

(by Rabbi Arye D. Gordon – LA)