Avraham Kalmanowitz

Saving the Mir yeshiva

Kalmanowitz is credited with securing the funds and papers to transfer the entire Mir yeshiva – consisting of 250 students, – to Kobe, Japan in 1941 and from there to Shanghai, and providing for its upkeep for five years. Thanks to the money Kalmanowitz sent, Mir students were able to board with Jewish families and eat a nourishing Shabbat meal most of the time – privileges that other refugee students in Shanghai did not enjoy. In addition to money, Kalmanowitz sent matzos and wine for Passover, and hundreds of copies of Talmudic tractates so the students could continue studying without interruption. The yeshiva was first established in temporary quarters in Far Rockaway and Brownsville, and then in a permanent home in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Kalmanowitz worked onsite to strengthen traditional Torah education among North African Jewish youth. Together with the leaders of Jewish communities in Morocco and Tunisia, he helped found the Otzar HaTorah educational network, which established 28 yeshivas and 20 Talmud Torahs, as well as girls schools, in those countries in 1947 and 1948. Another beneficiary of Kalmanowitz's largesse was Rabbi David Rebibo, a Moroccan-born student in France who used the student visa Kalmanowitz sent him to come study at the Mir in 1953. Afterwards Kalmanowitz helped Rebibo find his first teaching job. Rebibo has been dean of the Phoenix Hebrew Academy and senior rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Phoenix, Arizona, since 1965.

Death and succession

During a fund-raising trip to Florida in 1964, Kalmanowitz had a heart attack