Nov 8, 2018 By: mta
On Sunday, November 4th, MTA was privileged to have Rav David Lau, Chief Rabbi Of Israel, speak to the entire yeshiva. Perhaps the most memorable moment happened even before Rav Lau began to speak, as Freshman Eli Knapp waited by the front doors to greet him when he entered the building. It was an incredibly meaningful moment as Rav Lau met Eli, whose great-grandfather Rav Herschel Schacter (father of Rabbi Dr. JJ Schacter) was the chaplain that liberated Rav Lau’s father (former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau) from the Buchenwald concentration camp when he was just 7 years old. Rav Schacter discovered close to 1,000 orphaned children in Buchenwald and helped arrange for them to be transported to France and Switzerland. This amazing introduction truly set the tone for Rav Lau’s impactful divrei Torah, which concluded with a bracha for all of the MTA talmidim.