Rabbi Haim Shmulewitz, dean of the Mir Yeshiva (in Yiddish Mirrer Yeshiva) died here late last night and was buried here today. He was 76 years old and had been hospitalized suffering from cancer for some months. His funeral was attended by rabbis and religious leaders and by thousands of yeshiva students from all over the country.
A product of the pre-war Lithuanian yeshiva world, Shmulewitz was considered a foremost Talmudist and leading exponent of the ” Mussar” school–the teachings of self-discipline and religious philosophy developed in the Lithuanian yeshivot during the last century. His “Mussar” talks in the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim quarter used to attract hundreds of students each week.
Shmulewitz was born in Kovno and studied under the renowned Lithuanian sage, Rabbi Shimon Shkop. In 1925 he moved into the Mir Yeshiva, became one of its top student-teachers, and eventually married–as was the custom in the yeshivot–the daughter of the dean, Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel. From 1936 he served as head of the yeshiva.
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