The Dream That Founded Shaar HaShomayim

It is told that Rav Chaim Leib was jolted awake one night by a strange dream. Tired, he rolled over and drifted off again, only to see the very same dream once more. This time he was shaken, and he had no desire to wait for it to come a third time. He got up, dressed, and set out through the cool, deserted lanes of Yerushalayim toward the Botei Broide neighborhood, near Machaneh Yehuda, where Rav Shimon Horowitz, a great kabbalist, made his home.

In the darkness he noticed someone coming toward him, and to his surprise and joy he saw that it was Rav Shimon himself. "Why are you out so late?" Rav Shimon asked. Rav Chaim Leib said that he was on his way to tell him about a remarkable dream. Rav Shimon answered that he had dreamed as well, and was on his way to Rav Chaim Leib.

They stopped on a street corner and compared dreams. Each had seen an aged man with a face lit by an otherworldly glow, who pressed them to see that his Torah was learned in Yerushalayim, since it could return the Shechinah from exile. Rav Shimon understood that the elderly man was the holy Arizal, who was pained, as tradition has it, that so few Ashkenazim in the city studied his teachings. At that time only a single institution in Yerushalayim taught his Kabbalah, the Beis Keil yeshiva, whose scholars included the author of Shemen Sasson, Rav Yedidiah Aboulafieh and the Rashash.

On the spot the two resolved to found a yeshiva devoted to the Torah of the Arizal. A small group began learning quietly in the Old City, and before long the first shiur was given. They called the yeshiva Shaar HaShomayim, after the words Yaakov Avinu spoke upon waking from his dream of malachim going up and down (Bereishis 28:17).