Beyond the Bricks: How two Remnants of the Prewar Torah World were Merged in Boro Park

Looking around at Boro Park of today, it is difficult to imagine that our shtetl was once a very diverse place. While today it is inhabited primarily by chassidim, it was not that long ago that Boro Park was a melting pot of many different influences—with institutions serving each of these populations that were as diverse as they were.

One example of this changeover in the composition of Boro Park residents, and an institution which was forced to change with it, is the Telzer Minyan on 16^th Avenue. Boro Park once boasted a sizable population of alumni of the legendary Telzer yeshiva in Cleveland. They took as a rov their fellow alumnus, Rav Yaakov Horowitz, Rosh Yeshivas Beis Meir. But as the original nucleus moved out, it became Congregation Zera Kodesh, named for Rav Horowitz’s holy ancestor, the Ropshitzer Rov, zy”a.

Diagonally across 16^th Avenue, however, is the “Lakewood Minyan,” which is valiantly holding on.

But today, we focus on the merger of two important Boro Park institutions that have merged in an effort to remain strong for the future.

We refer to another legendary outpost in Boro Park, two blocks southerly down Sixteenth Avenue; the Mirer Minyan, which will now host a new contingent of mispalelim.

Founded by alumni of the Mirer Yeshiva in Poland, among them Reb Bezalel Feigelstein, whose children continue to care for its wellbeing to this day—this place once teemed with lions, the Alte Mirers they were called. They were ga’onim who had Shas at their fingertips, and their rischa d’Oraysa, their fierce debates in learning reverberated loudly between the dark wood panels that continue to serve as its walls.

Preceding the establishment of the Mirer Minyan by a number of years was Yeshiva Beis Yosef-Novaradok, transplanted in Boro Park by Rav Avrohom Yoffen, zt”l, the Novaradoker Rosh Yeshiva, around 1940. His grandson, Rav Mordechai Yoffen, moved the yeshiva to Flatbush (Avenue N and East 15^th Street), and the building was sold. Last week, the new owner demolished the building—leaving the remaining Novaradoker mispalelim in need of a shul.

This is when their neighbors at the Mirer Minyan graciously welcomed them in—along with the Beis Yosef Kollel (a longtime outpost for elite yungeleit)—bringing together these two shuls that trace their way back to the glorious Torah world of yore, and served as a home for the talmidim of those yeshivos as they were reestablishing themselves in a strange new land.

But the history goes even further. Relates one person involved with the Mirer Minyan: “There is a legend that when the Mirers were first flocking into Boro Park, and were finding each other following the great churban, it was the Novaradoker Shul that welcomed them—providing a designated table for the Mirers.

And so it is that seventy years later—despite the drastic changes that have taken place in Boro Park—that this favor of long ago is being repaid.