Early Years
Revel was born in Pren, a neighboring town of Kovno (today: Kaunas) Lithuania, then part of Russia, a son of the community's Rabbi Nachum Shraga Revel. His father was his first teacher, and when Nachum Revel died in 1896 he was buried next to his close friend Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor - indicative of his knowledge and stature.
He briefly studied in Telz yeshiva, attending the lectures of its Rosh yeshiva Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch. He was also taught by the renowned Rabbi Yitzchok Blazer and learned in the Kovno kollel. Revel received semicha at the age of 16, but it is not known from whom. Thereafter, the young scholar earned a Russian high school diploma, apparently through independent study. He also became involved in the Russian revolutionary movement, and following the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, was arrested and imprisoned. Upon his release the following year, he emigrated to the United States.
Read more about this topic: Bernard Revel
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“Parents ... are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfil the promise of their early years.”
—Anthony Powell (b. 1905)
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“It seemed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)