Ponevezh Yeshiva
Ponevezh Yeshiva, often pronounced as Ponevitch Yeshiva (), is a yeshiva founded in 1908, and located in Bnei Brak, Israel since 1944. The yeshiva has over three thousand students, including those of affiliated institutions, and is considered one of the leading Litvish yeshivas in Israel. History. Founded in 1908, the yeshiva was originally located in city of Panevėžys (Ponevezh), Lithuania prior to the Holocaust. After the death of its founder, Rabbi Yitzhak Yaakov Rabinovich, the yeshiva was re-established in Bnei Brak in 1944 by Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, who was residing in British Mandate of Palestine at the  time. Kahaneman appointed Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky as dean, and some years later appointed Rabbi Dovid Povarsky as "rosh yeshiva". The Kahaneman faction of the yeshiva is led by Rabbi Gershon Eidelstein and Rabbi Berel Povarsky, son of Rabbi Dovid Povarsky, and Rabbi Chaim Peretz Berman, a grandson of The Steipler, and a son-in-law of Rabbi Kahanaman. The Markovitz faction of the yeshiva is led by Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz, Rabbi Asher Deutch, and Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler. The main study hall has an original 16th-century Italian wooden "aron kodesh" (Torah scroll ark), brought to the yeshiva in the  early 1980s, and restored and re-gilded with 22 carat gild leaf. Controversy. During the 1990s, leadership of the yeshiva was the subject of a public disagreement between two of its leaders. Since then, the yeshiva has split and resulted in two yeshivas in the same building, with the students occupying different dormitories, though studying in the same learning hall and eating in the same dining room.