This month marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Chabad yeshivah, Torat Emet of Jerusalem.

Established on October 24, 1911 by the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, the school, which formally opened in Hebron on November 19, the 28th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, initially counted only seven senior students sent from the central Chabad yeshivah, Tomchei Temimim, in Lubavitch, Russia.

Until the outbreak of World War One in 1914, the yeshivah served as a spiritual anchor to the already prominent Chabad community in Hebron. It was housed in Beit Romano, near the Tomb of the Patriarchs and continued to function there until World War I, when the Turkish government exiled the Russian-born yeshiva staff and student body.

Chabad’s permanent presence in Hebron dates back to 1819, when Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch, the second Chabad Rebbe, sent a group of followers to establish a Chabad community in Hebron. In 1845, a second group of Chabad Chasidm immigrated to Hebron, among them Rabbi Yaakov Slonim and his wife Menucha Rachel, daughter of Rabbi Dovber. Menucha Rachel would serve as communal leader and matriarch until her passing in 1888.

In 1908, Rabbi Sholom Dovber purchased a house in the city for 25,000 rubles. Known as Beit Romano after its initial owner, a prominent Turkish business, the complex originally served as a retirement home for elderly Turkish Jews wishing to live near the Tomb of Patriarchs.

 In 1918, with the end of the war, the yeshivah students returned to Israel, this time to Jerusalem, where the Yeshiva continues to this day with an enrollment of several hundred students.

 Torat Emet has to its credit, produced hundreds of Torah scholars, Jewish rabbis and thinkers.  Among its illustrious graduates were the Chasidic rebbes of Lelov, Spink-Jerusalem and Zvhil and Rabbi Avraham Chaim Naeh, a renowned authority on Jewish law and Biblical measurements, as well as hundreds of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries stationed around the world.