Avigdor Miller

At age 14, Rabbi Miller went to New York City to attend Yeshivas Rabbenu Yitzchok Elchonon, at the time the only American high school offering high-level Jewish learning.[3] After this, he enrolled in Yeshiva College. He graduated from both Yeshiva University (YU) and Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), attaining a B.A. and rabbinical ordination, respectively.

While a student at YU, Rabbi Miller joined a chavurah (study group) together with a few other young men to study Mussar from the sefer Mesillas Yesharim. The organizer of the chavurah, which met clandestinely in Miller's dormitory room, was Yaakov Yosef Herman, a builder of Orthodox Judaism in New York City of the early 20th century. Some of the men in this group, which included Nosson Meir Wachtfogel, Yehuda Davis, and Mordechai Gifter, would go on to become notable Haredi rabbis in their own right.[3]

Rabbi Herman encouraged Rabbi Miller to travel to Europe to learn Torah in the yeshivas there. Rabbi Miller met Rabbi Isaac Sher, the son-in-law of Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, who was in New York collecting funds for the Slabodka yeshiva at the time. Sher did not raise much money, since this was during the Great Depression. But Sher would later declare this to be his most successful trip to America, since he was able to recruit and bring such a bright student to Slabodka.[3]

In 1932, at the age of 24,Rabbi Miller arrived in Europe to study at the Slabodka yeshiva in Slabodke, Lithuania, where he was greeted personally by Rabbi Avraham Grodzinski, the mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor). While there, he studied under Rabbi Sher. As a student in Slabodka, Rabbi Miller was so diligent in his studies that he wore out his shirtsleeves over the lectern he was using.[3] He was compelled to wear a coat during the summer, in order to conceal the multitude of overlapping patches that were his trousers.

Rabbi Shulman of Slabodka, a son-in-law of Rabbi Sher, introduced Rabbi Miller to Ettel Lessin, daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Moshe HaCohen Lessin of Slabodka (later mashgiach in RIETS). They were married in 1935.[3]

In 1938, due to the rise of Nazism and the tensions leading up to World War II, Miller sought to return to the United States with his wife and two sons. The American consul in Kovno at the time was a public high-school classmate and acquaintance of Rabbi Miller's from Baltimore. He arranged passage for Rabbi Miller's wife and children, who were not United States citizens. Upon returning to the U.S., Miller became rabbi of Congregation Agudath Shalom in Chelsea, Massachusetts.[4] Initially, the community was taken aback by Rabbi Miller's audacious pedagogy, and the sheer volume of his Torah presentations, attempting in vain to restrain his unconventional approach. Within a few years, however, the community had changed their minds, desiring for Rabbi Miller to stay longer. Miller received special dispensation to refrain from sending his young sons to public school. Instead, he had them tutored privately in secular subjects, and taught them Jewish studies himself. His sons still needed to appear at the public school twice a year for testing. This arrangement seemed to Rabbi Miller to not be ideal; so, he began to look for a community with a stronger Jewish presence.[3]

In 1944, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner, rosh yeshiva (dean) of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, hired Rabbi Miller to become its mashgiach ruchani, in which position he served until 1964. In 1945, he assumed the pulpit of the Young Israel of Rugby in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.[3] In 1975, with neighborhood demographics changing, Rabbi Miller established the Bais Yisroel of Rugby Torah Center on Ocean Parkway in Midwood, Brooklyn.