Yeshiva Ohel Moshe is a Bensonhurst-based, Modern Orthodoxco-edday school that was opened in 1927 or 1928, a time when most Brooklyn-based Jewish education was via Talmud Torah. It expanded under the leadership of the late Rabbi Eliyahu Machlis, who led Ohel Moshe, both the school and the synagogue housed in the same building, for "almost 40 years."
The Yeshiva
Ohel Moshe started as school for boys in the Jewish Community House, with a Dr Zuckerbrau as principal. In 1933, Rabbi Moshe Berman took over responsibility for the school. It obtained a New York State Regents charter in 1935. At the time, the chairman of the school's board was Rabbi Nachman Ebin, rabbi of nearby Congregation Sons of Israel, principal of its Talmud Torah, and an early leader in centralized kosher supervision for the city. There were 400 students in 1954, at which time the English principal was Dr. Morris M. Rubens In 1963, a co-ed class of 41 students graduated. The school, whose 1998 student enrollment was 300, operates Kiruv/outreach programs, and has students "from Russia to Albania, from Israel to Iran, from Syria to neighboring communities in Brooklyn." Celebration of the school's 90th anniversary included the completion of the writing of a Sefer Torah.
Kiruv/outreach
In the 1970s, in cooperation with JEP, Agudath Israel of America arranged for 100 youngsters from the former Soviet Union to participate in a summer day camp program housed at Yeshiva Ohel Moshe. The families of fifty of them agreed to switch their children from public school to yeshiva. Ohel Moshe agreed to accept "the majority of these youngsters." This was an example of what Rabbi Machlis' son Mordechai wrote about his father, that "Rav Machlis often referred to his yeshiva as an elementary school for ba’alei teshuvah."
The Machlis family
Family members ran and continue to make the school what it is. ;Rabbi Eliyahu Machlis The late Rabbi Eliyahu Machlis served as Rosh Yeshiva and Dean of the yeshiva and rabbi and spiritual leader of the Ohel Moshe congregation until his passing in 1990. Prior positions held by Rabbi Eliyahu Machlis include:
;Rebbetzin Sora Machlis Rebbetzin Sora Machlis, late wife of Rabbi Eliyahu Machlis, served for many years as English Principal. ;Rebbetzin Shifra Stone Rebbetzin Shifra Stone, her daughter, is the present General Studies Principal. ;Rabbi Dov Machlis Rabbi Dov Machlis, the youngest of Rebbetzin Stone's three brothers, is the present Menahel.
Yartzeits
The Yartzeits of Rabbi and Rebbetzin Machlis are 21 Teves and 17 Tamuz, respectively.
