A 1924 edict requiring enlistment in the military or supplementary secular studies in the yeshiva led a large number of students in the Slabodka yeshiva to relocate to Mandatory Palestine. The Alter of Slabodka sent Rabbis Avraham Grodzinski and Yechezkel Sarna to Palstine find a location for the yeshiva, and they decided on Hebron. The staff of the yeshiva in Lithuania was divided between the original Lithuanian yeshiva and the new Hebron branch, known as the Hebron Yeshiva. Rabbi Epstein would serve as rosh yeshiva in Hebron and Rabbi Finkel would serve as mashgiach together with Rabbi Yehuda Leib Chasman. In Lithuania, Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Sher, son-in-law of Rabbi Finkel, would serve as rosh yeshiva, while Rabbi Ber Hirsch Heller and Rabbi Avraham Grodzenski would serve as mashgiachs. In the 1929 Hebron massacre, twenty-four students were murdered, and the yeshiva was subsequently re-established in the Geula neighbourhood of Jerusalem.