MENDLOWITZ, SHRAGA FEIVEL

MENDLOWITZ, SHRAGA FEIVEL (1886–1948), rosh yeshivah, U.S. educator, and Orthodox Jewish leader. Mendlowitz was born in Vilag, Austria-Hungary, on the Polish border. His mother died when he was 10, and he and his father moved to Rimanov. By the time he was 12, he was studying with Reb Aaron, dayyan of Mezo-Laboretz, who considered him his top pupil. At 16 he studied with the rabbi of Chust, Moses Greenwald, and at 17 he moved to Unsdorf to study with Rabbi Samuel Rosenberg, author of the Be'er Shemuel, who became his role model. He then transferred to the yeshivah in Pressburg, where he studied with R. Simḥah Bunem Schreiber, a grandson of the Ḥatam Sofer.

In 1913, he left his family behind and moved to the United States. Known as a man who inspired his students, he served as a teacher-principal in the talmud torah of Scranton, Pennsylvania, for seven years. He returned to Europe after World War i to bring his family to Scranton. In 1920, he moved his family to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in New York City. In 1921, he was engaged as the principal of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath (founded in 1917), one of only four yeshivahs in the city. He switched from Hebrew to Yiddish as the language of instruction and in 1926 opened a high school.

In 1923, Mendlowitz and the ḥazzan Yossele *Rosenblatt produced Dos Yiddishe Licht. Filled with comments and inspiring articles, it started as a weekly, became a daily, and folded in 1927. Mendlowitz was also one of the first people to insist on meḥiẓot at Jewish weddings in America, and spoke out against dancing and mixed swimming, which were all accepted practices in those days.

He later organized a high school for secular studies under the auspices of the yeshivah, the second such school in the United States, after consulting with leading European rabbis. Mendlowitz also was happy to send Torah Vodaath students to other institutions of higher Jewish learning. In 1941, he set up a school in Spring Valley, New York, which was later to serve as a *kolel for the graduates of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. A committed member of the Agudat Israel World Organization, he became vice president in 1938 and personally raised large sums of money for the Ẓe'irei Agudah's rescue programs during the war. In 1944, he founded *Torah Umesorah, a national society for Orthodox Hebrew day schools with Rabbi Reuven Grozovsky. His son-in-law, Rabbi Alexander Linchner, founded Boy's Town Jerusalem and Merom Zion Institute as a result of Mendlowitz's dying wish that something be done for Ereẓ Israel.

[Jeanette Friedman (2^nd ed.)]