Memory Lane: R’ Noach Hakohen Millner

In the year 1930, resided in the apartment building at 914 47th Street, and presented himself to the census takers as the “Rabbi of congregation.” While it is unknown whether the said congregation was the Agudas Achim Shul around the corner (today known as Agudas Yisroel Agudas Achim, under the Agudah umbrella), we do know that the Millner’s were a prominent family in Yerushalayim of yore, and that Reb Noach found himself in Boro Park during the 1930’s. 

From Radovitz to Yerushalayim  

The Mirrer Yeshiva’s original home was in a section of Yerushalayim known as Botei Millner. As the writers Dovi Safier and Yehuda Geberer write in Mishpacha, “In 1944 [Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel, zt”l] founded the Mir Yeshivah of Yerushalayim, with ten Yerushalmi talmidim in a modest shul in Batei Milner, not far from their current location in the Beis Yisrael neighborhood.” The section lies adjacent to Beis Yisroel and Botei Ungarin. 

Who were the founders of this neighborhood, and how did the founder—Reb Shlomo Hakohen Milner’s—son end up in Boro Park of yore? 

Reb Shloime was born in in the year 1837 in the town of Radovitz (Rădăuţi) in Bukovina, on what is today the border between Romania and Ukraine. 

In 1881, he became enamored with the idea of Aliyah to Eretz Yisroel. By then, the Millner’s had ten children, and his wife was opposed to the idea. After two years, they finally took the advice of the Stefaneshter Rebbe for Reb Shloime to travel there alone with his eldest son and see about parnassah, and later bring over his family if it was viable. 

In 1883, they made the journey and settled in the Moshav Har Tov (near what is today Bet Shemesh), where he became a farmer. After being promised a plot of land if they’d move there, he brought over his family, as well as a nephew who was escaping the draft. 

He was disappointed to find out that the organizers of the moshav program were missionaries, and so he abandoned the place for Yerushalayaim without a penny. Here he began milling flour—one sack in an entire day—and his wife would sell the flour after sifting it. In this way, they made a meager livelihood.        

Eventually, his Arab neighbors suggested a business proposition for him apply his knowledge of the milling process and they would produce flour on a commercial scale. They imported millstones from Egypt, and used four horses to turn the millstones. He soon noticed that he was being taken advantage of by his partners, and left the business, partnering with Yerushalmi Yidden in a matzoh manufacturing endeavor—one that did not succeed. 

Reb Shloime was niftar in Yerushalayim in 1908. 

His son was Reb Noach Yehoshua Millner who was born in Radovitz in 1875. He came to Yerushalayim with his father at the age of nine in 1884, and when they settled in Har Tov, he began to learn with the local melamed, as well as with his cousin who had come with them. However, when his father realized that they were surrounded by missionaries, he sent him to Yerushalayim to learn with the melamed Reb Zeidel Sofer. 

Later, Noach Yehoshua entered a school which their neighbors, the kano’im of Yerushlayim, found objectionable. They placed enormous pressure on Reb Shloime to remove him from the school—including not allowing him to duchen or to receive an aliyah— which he eventually did, learning with the melamed Reb Zorach Rakover (Braverman) who was a talmid muvhok of RebNochumke Horodner, the Rebbi of the Chofetz Chaim. 

Founding Achva

He married Liba Rochel, the daughter of Reb Yudel Meller, his father’s one-time partner in the matzos production, and he went to work in the milling business for his father. 

He later started his own mill in Tzefas, since the area lacked quality flour, but this venture did not work out. He then went to Yaffo and opened businesses there, alongside his communal work. In 1898, he worked with fellow askonim to found the Achva neighborhood, near Neve Tzedek, and it was here that RebAvrohom Yitzchok Hakohen Kook resided. 

Tragedy hit the family when his wife died in 1905, in Yaffo. He got married in 1910 for a second time to Chaya Rochel Nachomovsky whose first husband was one of the founders of Chadera. 

The first one of the family to come to America was their son Achitov, who came in 1921. RebNoach came sometime in the late 1920’s, and his wife and some of their children joined him in 1930. 

It is unclear when he returned to Eretz Yisroel, but he was niftar in Tel Aviv in 1937 following a lifetime of activism for the Klal.