Hi! Thanks for visiting this site. What I really want to do is to get you acquainted with the Yeshiva of Kishiniev. It is a great place to know and our students are great people to meet.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Moshe M. Eisemann. I am a Rebbi at Yeshivas Ner Israel in Baltimore and have been for the past thirty-five years. I was born in Germany from which hell my family managed to escape in 1937. We went to England, where my father who was an expert on antique books, manuscripts and prints, was able to reestablish his business. My siblings and I were spared the horrors of the Blitzkrieg, because, together with all the other children in our school, we were evacuated away from London to Shefford, a small village, where we lived as foster children of the local populace. Subsequently my parents also moved from London to a small town, Chesham, where after three years of separation we were able to rejoin them.

When the war ended we moved back to London where I graduated from the Hasmonean Grammar School. After that I was privileged to study for six years at the famous Gateshead Yeshiva. From there I went off to the USA to continue my learning in Lakewood. Today, everybody knows Lakewood as a huge Yeshiva with over three thousand Talmidim. When I got there in 1952, there were just a hundred of us. After two years there, I returned to England to meet and marry my wonderful wife. We remained another three years in Lakewood after which I took a teaching position in the Yeshiva of Philadelphia. After eleven wonderful years there, we moved to Baltimore and have been here ever since.

The Kishiniev story could be said to begin in 1984 when I made my first visit to the former Soviet Union. I missed Brezhnev but arrived under Andropov, a former head of the KGB. Things were still very tight and whatever teaching we managed to do, and we did a lot, had to be done in secret. Even so, there was a constant need to be aware that we were being followed and bugged all the time.

Let me tell you a story that happened to me in Kishiniev long before anybody ever dreamed that there would be a Yeshiva there one day. In those days we were sent under the aegis of the VAAD L’HATZOLAS NIDCHEI YISRAEL and always went as a twosome. It was deemed to be too dangerous to travel there alone. On every visit we would go to Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and one other city. I remember that on the first trip we went to Riga (capital of Latvia), on the second to Yerevan (capital of Armenia) and on the third, to Kishiniev (capital of Moldova). So this must have been in ’86 or ’87.

At that time there was, as far as we knew, only one observant Jew in Kishiniev but on these trips we did not count noses. If one Yid wanted to learn, that was enough for us to go. We were staying in the Intourist Hotel, an old moth-eaten tumble down place with a very slow elevator. With a lot of huffing and puffing it eventually got you where you needed to go, but it took a long, long time. We had made an appointment to meet our contact at 9 o’clock in the morning, just outside the hotel. We made sure to leave our room in time and, in fact, made it down with about a minute to spare. Then, to my horror, I remembered that I had left my address book on the table in our room and the last thing that we wanted was that the KGB should get a peek at that. I had to go back, but that would make me late for the appointment. I decided not to take the elevator but to run up the stairs. I got to the room, closed the door but did not lock it, and sat down by the table in order to take care of my notes.

All of a sudden, the door opens and there were four of five people standing there, clearly very perturbed at seeing me in my room. They apologized profusely and explained that they had made a mistake and come to the wrong room.

What happened of course was that they had seen us come down in the elevator, but had not noticed that I had run up again by way of the stairs. They were the team assigned to search our room and the last thing that they had expected was to see me there.

In a way, all this shadow boxing that we had to do with the KGB sounds funny. To tell the truth, it was not funny at all. They played hard ball in those days. As foreigners, we were fairly safe, but the Yidden whom we visited and taught, never knew when, where or how they would be hit. People landed in jails and, worse still, in psychiatric hospitals. The Communists battle with the Ribono shel Olam was deadly serious. Nobody then could even dream that in a few short years the whole thing would simply roll over and die. That was a miracle if ever there was one.

Life among the refuseniks was no fun. What does “refusenik” mean? It means that they had applied for permission to leave the Workers Paradise and go to Eretz Yisrael, and had been “refused”. Why was it no fun? Because immediately upon applying to leave, they would loose their jobs or, if they were students at a university, they would be thrown out. There they were with absolutely no income, their careers a shambles, with nothing left beside their Emunah and their integrity. What do you do about eating? What do you do about keeping the children home from compulsory school on Shabbos? There are many stories of unsung heroes and heroines who stood up straight and refused to equivocate. Apparently life with the Ribono shel Olam was worth many all to real sacrifices.

Let me tell you a little story. On my first trip a met a young fellow who, two or three months before his graduation was expelled from his university because he had applied to make Aliyah. I asked him why he had not waited until he had received his degree? His answer still reverberates inside my mind: “It was so cold out there, I needed a little warmth!”

It was against the background of this Jewish experiences that a few years later we were able to found the Yeshiva of Kishiniev. Of the events leading up to that auspicious moment and an account of how the project got onto its feet, more in a future posting.