Origins
The impetus to found Shaar Hashamayim Yeshiva came from a dream experienced by two noteworthy Jerusalem rabbis on the same night in 1906. Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Leib Auerbach, author of Chacham Lev, awoke one night from a strange dream and went back to sleep, only to be awakened again after the dream repeated itself. He got dressed and set out for the home of Rabbi Shimon Horowitz, a kabbalah scholar and author of Shem MiShimon and Kol Mevaser, to discuss the dream with him. As he walked, he saw someone approaching him in the night and was surprised that it was none other than Horowitz, who was coming to see him about the dream he had just dreamed. It turned out that they had dreamed the same dream. They had each envisioned an honorable Jew, his face shining with a supernatural light, who had demanded to know why people weren't studying his teachings. "My Torah has the power to bring the Divine Presence back from its exile," the man told them. The two realized that the man in the dream was the Arizal, the sixteenth-century mystic of Safed, who was known to have regretted the fact that few Jewish men who studied the Torah also studied Kabbalah, in particular the Ashkenazi Jews of Jerusalem. At that time, the only place where the Arizal's teachings were studied was the Beit El Synagogue in Jerusalem. On the spot, Auerbach and Horowitz decided to open a yeshiva for the study of the Arizal's kabbalah and share the responsibilities as joint roshei yeshiva.
The yeshiva opened shortly afterwards in the Old City of Jerusalem, with accommodations for a Talmud Torah, a yeshiva ketana, a yeshiva gedola, and a kollel for married students.
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