This was accomplished in great part thanks to donations by Rabbi Yitzchok Zvi Ratzersdorfer, a Hungarian Jew who later relocated to Antwerp, Belgium and helped build the Jewish community there.

In 1873, Aaron Hershler, a yeshiva student at the Kollel, was standing guard at the Montefiore Windmill, a landmark windmill in Jerusalem, when a group of Arab Muslims from Silwan attempted to rob his family's home in Mishkenot Sha'ananim, the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

[1] Seventy-five years after his death, Hershler was recognized by the Israel Defense Forces as the first "national martyr" in the Jewish-Arab conflict.

He is one of approximately three dozen Jews killed during Ottoman-ruled Palestine, who are commemorated as part of Israeli's annual Yom Hazikaron memorial day.

[2] When the Jewish community had to flee the Old City during the 1938 riots, the Kollel moved its operations to other neighborhoods, including Mea Shearim, Givat Shaul and Ramat Shlomo.