The numerous Talmud editions indicate the demand for the work, and the multiplicity of yeshibot explains the cause of the demand.  We have seen how the yeshibot destroyed by Chmielnicki were re-established soon after the massacres ceased.  Their number increased when the Hasidic movement threatened to render the knowledge of the Talmud unpopular; and when the Maskilim, too, made them a target for their attacks, there was hardly a town in which such institutions were not to be found.  But surpassing all the yeshibot of the nineteenth century, if not of all centuries, was the Yeshibah Tree of Life (Yeshibat ’Ez Hayyim) in the townlet of Volozhin.  There the cherished hopes of the Gaon were finally realized.  Within its walls gathered the elect of the Russo-Jewish youth for almost a century.

The founder of this famous yeshibah was Rabbi Hayyim Volozhin, the greatest of the Gaon’s disciples (1749-1821).  A prominent Talmudist at twenty-five, he, nevertheless, left his business and household at that age, and went to Vilna to become the humble pupil of the Gaon, whose method he had followed from the beginning.  When he felt himself proficient enough in his studies, he returned to his native place, and founded (1803) the Tree of Life College, with an enrollment of ten students, whom he maintained at his own expense.  But soon the fame of the yeshibah and its founder spread far and wide, and students flocked to it from all corners of Russia and outside of it.  In response to Rabbi Hayyim’s appeal contributions came pouring in, a new and spacious school-house was erected, and Volozhin became a Talmudic Oxford.  To be a student there was both an indication of superiority and a means to proficiency.  Rabbi Hayyim did away with the “Tag-essen,” or “Freitisch” custom, and introduced a stipendiary system in its stead, thus fostering the self-respect of the students.  But they did not as a rule require much to satisfy them with their lot.  They came to Volozhin “to learn,” and they well knew the Talmudic statement, that “no one can attain eminence in the Torah unless he is willing to die for its sake.”

Rabbi Hayyim was succeeded by his son Rabbi Isaac, who united knowledge of secular subjects with profound Talmudic erudition, was active in worldly affairs, and played a prominent part in the Jewish history of his day.  He was of the leading spirits who, in 1842, attended the rabbinical conference at St. Petersburg convoked by Nicholas I. The number of students increased under his leadership, according to Lilienthal, to three hundred.  But Rabbi Isaac became so engrossed in public affairs that he found he could no longer do justice to his position.  His two sons-in-law, therefore, took his place, and when the older died, in 1854, Rabbi Naphtali Zebi Judah Berlin (1817-1893) entered on his useful career, unbroken for forty years, as the dean of the greatest seat of learning in the Diaspora.  Under his administration the Tree of Life College reached both the height of its prosperity and the end of its existence (1892).[41]