FREIFELD - Sh'or Yoshuv Institute

The Streets of
Brownsville
The childhood of Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld
paralleled that of tens of thousands of fi rst-generation
American children in the crowded streets of Brownsville.
His parents, Shmuel and Baila, hard-working
immigrants from the Russian town of Nevel, joined
the Nusach HoAri shul, led by Rav Nissan Telushkin: a
decision that proved fateful. The rov, a man of learning
and depth, would be a seminal infl uence on young
Seymour, who later testifi ed that at the age of fi ve years
old he fi rst sensed that a Jew had ability to become ‘big,’
to develop dimensions of greatness —a conclusion the
child reached from studying his rov.
Another fateful decision by Baila Freifeld was her break
with the neighborhood norm —unlike most of her
friends, she sent her son to cheder, not the local public
school. Toras Chaim, under the leadership of Rabbi
Yitzchok Shmidman, would expose the boy to European
rabbeim, fi lling his youthful world with the images, and
ideals, of old-time Jews, with beards and peyos and
yiddishe minhagim, honing a life-long reverence for Jews
of that generation.
...for imbuing a boy from
the streets of Brownsville
with the ambition to reach
the peak of creation: to
become a ben Torah.
After cheder, he went to Mesivta Chaim
Berlin, where he fi rst encountered his rebbi,
Rav Yitzchok Hutner. It was Rav Hutner
who invested yiddishkeit with colors and
layers of meaning, who was ultimately
responsible for imbuing a boy from the
streets of Brownsville with the ambition to
reach the peak of creation: to become a ben
Torah.
Many years later, Reb Shlomo paid a
moving testimony to the fi gures that shaped
his childhood. When he was diagnosed
with the illness that accompanied him
throughout the last years of his life, he
called in a confi dante and asked him to
dispatch his own talmidim to daven for him
at different kevarim: prominent among
them those of Rav Telushkin and Rav
Hutner —a tribute to their contributions to
his development and emergence as a great
Rosh Yeshiva.
CHILDHOOD YEARS EDUCATION / CHAIM BERLIN / ESTABLISHING SH'OR YOSHUV
SH'OR YOSHUV: 1967 UNTIL 1990
SH'OR YOSHUV: 1990 UNTIL TODAY
SEFER TORAH CAMPAIGN