Mystic, Teacher, Troublemaker –Shimon Engel and the Dilemmas of Hasidic Yeshiva Education in Interwar Poland

Before the interwar period, yeshivas were virtually unknown among Polish Hasidim, who preferred a less formal education centred on a shtibl (house of study). However, following the First World War, shtiblekh emptied out, as less and less students found the education they offered attractive in the new circumstances. The Hasidic yeshivas were then designed as an emergency measure to retain the young people within the Hasidic fold. Paradoxically, this educational revolution to a great extent depended on people like Shimon Engel Horowic of Żelechów (1876-1943) – elite scholars educated in traditional shtiblekh, who often looked on modern yeshivas with suspicion, if not with outright enmity.
Shimon Engel embodied the conflict between the shtibl and the yeshiva. He was involved in running several Hasidic yeshivas in Poland, yet his writings give away his contempt for these university-like institutions, which turned the students away from the study of Torah for its own sake. Despite his charisma and knowledge, Engel frequently changed yeshivas, until he was finally removed from Yeshivat Hakhme Lublin, when a conflict between him and another teacher ended up in violent riots.
In my paper, I will present the clash between Engel’s idea of Hasidic education and the modernising endeavours of Hasidic leaders in Poland. In result, my presentation will not only consider this controversial, yet somewhat forgotten figure, but will also contribute to the discussion regarding the Orthodox Jewish education in interwar Eastern Europe.