Lithuania, Baltimore and Washington Heights: How YU Saved a Telz Student in 1940
Binyamin Bak was 19 years old in March of 1940 when he boarded the Drottningholm in Sweden, arriving at the coast of Ellis Island eleven days later. His decision to leave Europe was propelled less by fears of the oncoming war as it was by the prospect of Torah and pursuing rabbinical opportunities in the United States. Yet the decision saved his life. This was the last trip the Swedish boat would make to New York. A few months later, the Russians took over Binyamin’s hometown in Lithuania, preventing Lithuanian Jews — including his entire family — from escaping.
Binyamin was born in a small town called Tauragnai in Lithuania. As a young child, he learned in a yeshiva ketana, and at around bar mitzvah age he went off to Telz to learn more seriously in this venerated European yeshiva. It was in Telz that he met and learned with the young Mordechai Gifter.
Rabbi Gifter grew up in Baltimore, receiving a more limited Torah education at the local Hebrew school. At the strong advice of his uncle who recognized his Torah potential, Rabbi Gifter relocated to Telz in his late teens. Because he began behind the rest of the Telz students, he was paired to learn with Binyamin Bak, who was six years his junior. Despite their age difference, the two developed a strong chavruta and friendship, supposedly completing Masechet Yevamot twice in one winter zman.
Their friendship not only continued over decades and across oceans; it also saved Binyamin’s life.
When Rabbi Gifter got engaged to the rosh yeshiva’s daughter and returned to the United States, he urged Binyamin to follow him due to the great opportunities for young rabbis. His advice was convincing, and Binyamin arranged plans to immigrate. Dean Samuel Sar of Yeshiva University — the uncle who had previously encouraged Rabbi Gifter to learn in Telz — made this possible by sending Binyamin a YU student visa, which granted Binyamin a lifesaving spot on the Drottningholm.
When Binyamin flew on a small charter flight from Lithuania to Sweden to make his boat, he was totally alone. Among his few possessions was a letter of semicha from Rabbi Bloch, the rosh yeshiva of Telz, featuring a glowing endorsement of Binyamin’s Torah capabilities. After withstanding considerable questioning on his way out of Europe, Binyamin passed border control and was off to YU.
Upon arrival, it became clear that Binyamin faced various impediments in beginning university: First, he didn’t speak English, and second, he didn’t have a high school degree. He was a brilliant person, but his years spent learning in Telz didn’t prepare him for calculus or English literature. He therefore took high school courses at George Washington High School while also working with a private English tutor.
Within a year of his arrival to YU, Binyamin was chosen to go with a group of RIETS students to learn at Rav Soloveitchik’s kollel in Boston. Although Binyamin was chosen for being a talented Torah scholar with incredible potential, he told a more humble story about himself — that he was young and had no family, and the university figured that he had nothing to lose by moving from New York to Boston.
In Boston, Binyamin received a second semicha from Rabbi Levine, the rabbi of Salem, Mass. He also developed a close relationship with Rav Soloveitchik. When Rav Soloveitchik’s father passed away in 1941, he went to teach at YU. Binyamin returned to YU with him for a short time before marrying his wife Miriam and moving to Savannah, Ga. to serve as an assistant rabbi. Miriam taught Talmud Torah classes there and ran the nursery school.
From Savannah, the next step for Binyamin — now Rabbi Bak — and his expecting wife, Miriam, was Baltimore, where they planted more permanent roots. In Baltimore, Rabbi Bak served as the rabbi of Congregation Tifereth Israel for over two decades. Later, in 1971, he became the founding rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Emunah, a vibrant shul to this day.
Despite coming to America on a YU student visa, Rabbi Bak’s first few years in the United States were so hectic that he never actually received a college degree. Now settled in Baltimore, he enrolled in Johns Hopkins University as a Middle Eastern studies major. Soon, though, he became disenchanted by the classes that were offered, joking wryly that “higher Biblical criticism is really lower antisemitism.” He switched to an education major and later received a master’s from Hopkins in education.
Rabbi Bak and Miriam’s family began to grow. They had their first son, Pinchas, and just a year and a half later, their second son, Yossi, was born.
Rabbi Bak’s entire family — his parents and three siblings — had perished in the Holocaust, but because communication was so limited at the time, he maintained a sliver of hope that they were alive. It was only years later, when people returned from their travels to Europe with first-hand reports, that Rabbi Bak discovered that his family was no longer alive. He named his younger two children in their memory: Hertzl, for his father, and Hennie, for his mother.
During this time, Rabbi Gifter was one of the heads of Telz yeshiva, which had been transplanted and rebuilt in Cleveland. Rabbi Gifter regularly returned to his hometown of Baltimore to fundraise for his yeshiva, on which occasions the former chavruta would reminisce about their past and get to know each other’s families.
During one of these visits, Rabbi Gifter told Rabbi Bak’s eldest son Pinchas — “Pinky” — that he would thrive at Telz. Pinky went excitedly, and Yossi, who was incredibly close with his older brother, followed soon after.
From Telz, Pinky and Yossi went on — like their father — to Yeshiva University. Hertzl, who was significantly younger than his two brothers, went to YU as well. Unlike their father, their YU experiences were anything but transient.
Pinky thrived in YU, socially and academically. He enjoyed outreach events as well as English literature classes, and particularly loved writing short stories about the Holocaust, which fascinated him. One program that became a facet of Pinky’s YU experience was the Torah Leadership Seminar, which included Shabbatonim and weeklong camp getaways, where high school, secular college and YU students were invited to enjoy singing, Torah and inspiration from YU upperclassmen and faculty members. It was at one of these Shabbatonim that Pinky met his wife Karen, who soon transferred to Stern College. And it was at a later one of these seminars, on a rainy August day in Camp Morasha, that Pinky and Karen celebrated their wedding surrounded by hundreds of dancing students.
For Yossi, too, YU was a staple of his young adult years. In high school he did not receive a robust education; he attended yeshivas with excellent Judaics but limited secular education, and even missed an entire semester of ninth grade for his family’s mini-sabbatical in Israel, a gift to Rabbi Bak for completing 15 years of leadership at Congregation Tifereth Israel. When Yossi arrived at YU, he finally found a place to settle down.
Yossi remained at YU for nine years: four years as an undergraduate, three years in the semicha program while taking graduate math courses and two years completing his math doctorate. He initially chose to pursue a math major because he excelled on the math section of the SAT, despite the fact that the subject had not interested him in the past. But it turned out that higher level math courses fascinated him. In YU, he pursued a Ph.D. studying closely with Donald Newman, with whom he later published a textbook on complex analysis.
Yossi and his wife Miriam met while she was in high school, and although Miriam didn’t go to Stern, she recalls fondly their years living in the Heights, eating with friends at the YU cafeteria and going with Yossi to the Dean’s Reception.
Yossi and Miriam sent all five of their children to YU. Additionally, Miriam was the long-standing principal of Bat Torah Academy in Rockland County, which became a feeder high school for Stern College. Yossi and Miriam’s grandchildren — my cousins, siblings and I — mark the fourth generation of Bak family members to attend YU. Notably, on my paternal side as well, there is a direct line of four generations attending YU — a story that was featured when my older brother and sister began YU 10 years ago.
My grandfather, Yossi Bak, tells me that this is the story of three people — Dean Samuel Sar, Rabbi Mordechai Gifter and Rabbi Binyamin Bak — and three places — Lithuania, Baltimore and Washington Heights. These three figures form a triangle in my mind, their journeys so deeply connected and intertwined as they inspired and taught people in the same places throughout their lives.
My great-grandfather did not have an easy life; he lost his entire immediate family in the Holocaust, and his eldest son — my great-uncle Pinky — died suddenly at age 32. Already at that tragically young age, Pinky accomplished incredible things in chinuch and outreach work, lived and taught in multiple communities and had five children and twin girls on the way. Despite his hardships, Rabbi Bak led a rich life, forming connections with chavrutas and teachers, leading a congregation for decades with weekly Shabbos drashot, serving part time on the New York Beis Din, compiling some of his insights in a sefer titled “Matzevet Pinchas [The Monument of Pinchas]” in honor of his late son and demonstrating to his children and grandchildren that Torah is of the highest value.
My life, and the lives of my family members, are owed to the courage he had at age 19 to board a ship alone, with a YU student visa folded in his pocket.
Photo Caption: Rabbi Binyamin Bak
Photo Credit: Yossi Bak
