The yeshiva was conceived in 1917 and formally opened in 1918, by friends Binyomin Wilhelm and Louis Dershowitz, to provide a yeshiva education centering on traditional Jewish sacred texts to the children of families then moving from the Lower East Side to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. From the diary of Binyomin Wilhelm, Louis Dershowitz is credited, not only with giving early financial and moral support for the founding of the yeshiva, but for the very idea of establishing a yeshiva in Williamsburg. The two friends contacted prominent local Rabbi Zev Gold of Congregation Beth Jacob Anshe Sholom and together they formed a board and established the Yeshiva on Keap Street in Williamsburg as an elementary school. The Yeshiva later moved to a new building at 206 Wilson Street and remained there until 1967, when it moved to its current location at 452 and 425 East 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11218. Rabbi Gold was elected as the Yeshiva's first president and suggested the name of the school, after the yeshiva founded in Lida in 1905 by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, which combined secular studies with Jewish studies and traditional Talmud study. During this first period in the yeshiva's history, the yeshiva was modeled after those in Europe, with religious studies in Yiddish and Talmud taught in the Hungarian style of the European yeshivas. The founding members of the yeshiva soon offered the principalship of the institution to Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, who headed the yeshiva from 1922 to 1948. Under Mendlowitz's leadership, a Mesivta was opened in 1926. Later he opened a Yeshiva Gedola as well. Rabbi Dovid Leibovitz, a notable torah scholar from Europe was brought in to head the yeshiva's beit midrash in 1929 but left after only four years to start his own yeshiva after personal conflicts with Rabbi Mendlowitz. Two years later, in 1935, Rabbi Shlomo Heiman became rosh yeshiva, a position he held until his death in 1944. When Rabbi Mendlowitz's died in 1948, he entrusted the yeshiva to Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky and Rav Reuven Grozovsky as roshei yeshiva, Rav Alexander Linchner as the financial rosh yeshiva and secular studies principal, Rav Gedalya Schorr as menahel of the yeshiva, and Rav Nesanel Quinn as the principal of the high school. The yeshiva has since expanded to include a beit midrash in Monsey, an elementary school division in nearby Marine Park, and two summer camps all serving a student body, from nursery to postgraduate kollel, that numbers nearly 2,000 students.
Philosophy
"Torah im Derech Eretz" historically influenced the yeshiva's philosophy, but today it is strongly influenced by the Haredi philosophy. However, Torah Vodaas is one of the many major haredi yeshivas that allow its students to attend college while studying at the yeshiva. The great majority of the yeshiva's graduates go on to work in fields that are not related to the torah education that they received in yeshiva.
