Monsey Memories: Rav Avraham Baddouch’s Journey Morocco to Monsey

By: Yitzy Fried

The serenity of Monsey has traditionally attracted numerous great men who sought to shape their talmidim away from the hustle and bustle of the city. One of them was Rav Avrohom Baddouch—a figure who was miraculously snatched from the Zionist forces who sought to turn young, vulnerable souls from the Middle-Eastern countries toward a secular life.

He learned under some of the great Roshei Yeshiva, and was soon ready to give back to his Sephardic brethren.

In 1967, in a manifestation of his efforts on behalf of Sephardic Jewry, Harav Baddoush sought to open a yeshivah for Moroccan bachurim. He traveled to America to scout a location, and after an extensive search settled on Monsey, where he moved His family shortly thereafter, and opened Yeshivas Chachmei Sfarad.

Here, he displayed leadership and Torah greatness. He forged a close friendship with Harav Yaakov Kamenetzky, the Rosh Yeshivah of Torah Vodaath, who advised him on all matters of the yeshivah. He displayed great courage as he turned down a very large amount of money from a Jew who he found out was not shomer Shabbos. The financial difficulties led to the yeshivah closing its doors after only three years. Nevertheless, his disciples from that period are respected Talmidei Chachamim and lay leaders.

At this time, Harav Abba Berman, zt”l, the Rosh Yeshivah of Iyun Hatalmud in Monsey, asked him to assume the position of mashgiach at the yeshivah. For three years he said many shmuessen at the yeshivah, which the bachurim report as having been very deep. The majority of these talks are printed in the sefer Meoros Avraham.

Thus, his career of harbotzas Torah in Monsey shaped hundreds of talmidim within the tranquility that Monsey offered.

During that time Harav Baddoush began cultivating a group of young lay leaders in Mexico City who would donate to the yeshivah. They felt the need for a Day School in Mexico. At a fateful meeting that they held for this purpose, Harav Baddoush categorically declared, “Without a kollel, there is nothing to talk about.” The lay people who had never heard of kollel said, what is kollel? Chacham, we should work, and they will just sit and learn?! While in hindsight—with hundreds of homegrown kollel yungeleit toiling in Torah in Mexico City, the answer should have perhaps seemed obvious—on that night the future of Syrian Jewry in Mexico was not certain at all.

Yet on that night, as Chacham Avraham would later describe it, the turning point took place, and “we succeeded in shattering the kelipah of Mexico.” The Aram Sobah institutions, with Kollel Aram Sobah with its many divisions perhaps its cornerstone, is the culmination of the dream, and the undisputed turning point in the trajectory of Syrian Jewry in the Americas which previously faced almost certain assimilation.

In a letter that he would later write, Rav Baddoush recalls, “although I have a serene life over here [in Monsey], and I could go on this way, my soul burns within me for the plight of Sephardic Jewry—and I must do for them.”

And so it was that this Gaon in Torah, giant in mussar, product of the greatest yeshivos, and prized student of the greats of the postwar Torah world, set to work: sitting in a small home teaching alef-beis to small children. He had a world to save... one year later, in 1977, Kollel Aram Sobah was launched and has continued to grow exponentially ever since.