page_title: Beth Medrash Govoha
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Beth Medrash Govoha / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This building was the original facility that housed BMG's academic programs. It was purchased by BMG in 1943 and was in use until the 1960's.
context_page_description: Beth Medrash Govoha is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Lithuanian yeshiva in Lakewood Township, New Jersey. It was founded by Rabbi Aaron Kotler in 1943 and is the second-largest yeshiva in the world, after Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. As of 2019, it had 6,715 students, 2,748 regular and 3,967 in Kollel status. The principal Rosh yeshiva since 1982 is Rabbi Malkiel Kotler. Talmud and halakha studies in the institution are carried in the form of over 200 small groups, Chaburos, which consist of several students mentored by a veteran, each pursuing its own specific curriculum with an emphasis on individual learning.
context_section_description: Beth Medrash Govoha is a successor institution to Yeshivas Etz Chaim, which was located in Slutzk, in what is today Belarus. That institution was led by Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer and by Rabbi Aaron Kotler, until it was forcibly closed by the Soviet Revolution of 1917, which banned all forms of Jewish studies  Etz Chaim was reestablished in Kletzk, under then Polish rule by Rabbi Aaron Kotler, where it thrived until World War II and the destruction of much of European Jewry.  Rabbi Kotler escaped the Nazis in 1941 and came to the United States where he opened BMG in 1943.
caption: BMG - 7th Street Study Hall 1943
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