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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.
United States
Immediately after his arrival, Revel enrolled
in New York's RIETS yeshiva. He received a
master of arts degree from New York University
in 1909. Around this time, one of America's
senior rabbis and president of the Union of
Orthodox Rabbis, Rabbi Bernard Levinthal of
Philadelphia, visited the yeshiva and, after
discussing Talmudic topics with the new
student, invited him to come to Philadelphia
as the rabbi's secretary and assistant. Revel
accepted the post and began to familiarise
himself with the alien milieu of American
Jewry. At the same time, he began attending
law school in Philadelphia, but eventually
decided that the law was not his calling. In
1911, he earned a doctorate of philosophy from
Dropsie College, the first graduate of that
school; his thesis was entitled "The Karaite
Halakhah and Its Relation to Sadducean,
Samaritan, and Philonian Halakhah".
In November 1908, Revel was introduced to his
future wife, Sarah Travis of Marietta, Ohio,
whom he married in 1909. The members of the
Travis family were Lubavitcher chassidim and
wealthy Oklahoma oil-men, and Rabbi Revel
moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to join the family
business after finishing his doctorate.
However, even while serving as an assistant to
his brother-in-law Solomon in the petroleum
business, and amassing his own fortune, Rabbi
Revel's primary occupation continued to be his
Torah study. |
