Torat Chaim Yeshiva (TCY)

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In 1894 Rabbi Isaac (Yitzhak) Vinograd established Torat Chaim Yeshiva in Al Wad Street in the Old City. The Yeshiva elected and supported students from all parts of the Ashkenazi Diaspora. It challenged the existing arrangements in the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem by offering scholarships and grants to students according to their individual merits without paying attention to the common quota that was customary to applicants from different diasporic communities.

The location of the yeshiva in the heart of the Via Dolorosa and the Muslim environment was problematic. The yeshiva was partially burnt down in the conflicts of 1921 and in 1936 it was permanently evacuated. The property was then leased to one of the neighbours (a Palestinian policeman whose name Isaiah and his wife Rachel did not remember), and until 1948 he used to come to visit the Vinograds and pay the rent. Most importantly, while all other Jewish institutions were destroyed by Jordanian soldier in 1948 and houses and synagogues were looted by the mob, Torath Chaim Yeshiva and its small library (with mostly liturgical and prayer books) was saved by the Palestinian guardian and his family. Nineteen years late, in 1967, Isaiah Vinograd remembers going to visit the property and his discovery that it was all kept in one of the small rooms at the back.

Ever since then Isaiah Vinograd has been collecting documents and books that are related to his family yeshiva. Today the building serves the right wing nationalist institute Yeshivat Ateret Koahnim. The remains of the archives, a unique window to the Jewish lives in the Old City before 1948, are kept at the home of Yeshayau Vinograd. The small collection contains approximately six albums with about 200 documents each.

Yeshayau Vinograd is a bibliographer and book collector. He is famous for his Ozar Hasefer Haivri (Jerusalem, 1980) an index of all Hebrew Incunabula (all the Hebrew printed books between 1469 and 1863, including 95,000 titles). [The Treasures of the Hebrew Book, 2 vols. A digital format extended to 1948 is sold as in an electronic version as a database, with images and auction price list]. This book has long become ‘the bible’ for collector, dealer and auctioneers.

Vinograd’s collection of nearly 1,000 rare books has never been digitised or microfilmed and contains many rare and unique books as well as documents and painting. Among the documents in his possession is the famous letter the Vilna Gaon wrote to his family when he planned to immigrate to the Holy Land. Vinograd’s latest book on the Treasures of the Vilna Gaon contains some images from his own collection.

Y. Vinograd, Otzar Sifrei Hagra, Jerusalem 1998 (Hebrew)
Y. Vinograd, Otzar Hachochma, Jerusalem 1980 (Hebrew)

Access by invitation only.

Entry prepared on November 2018.

http://www.ytchaim.com/
Jerusalem historical libraries and archives revisited, Revised report prepared for Open Jerusalem, October 2014, Merav Mack

Author: Open Jerusalem http://www.openjerusalem.org/