The Yeshiva is an English translation by Curt Leviant of the Yiddish novel Tsemakh Atlas (צמח אטלס) by Chaim Grade.
The main protagonist is Tsemakh Atlas, who at the beginning of the novel is a junior Novaredker rabbi sent out to open his own yeshiva in a small town.
[8] Tsemakh Atlas is an advanced Talmudic student/teacher in Nareva, committed to the Musar philosophy, which puts him at odds with most of his fellow Jews, observant or not, learned or not.
After the death of Rav Yosef-Yoizl Hurwitz, his rabbi sends Tsemakh to Amdur[9] to found a new yeshiva, knowing this mission will not succeed.
Tsemakh ends up engaged to the plain, quiet daughter of an Amdur storekeeper, but he is told by the townspeople that the man is vicious and cruel, and certainly lying about the dowry.
The maid flees, and Tsemakh leaves Lomzhe to set up his own yeshiva in Valkenik He tells Slava not to come with him, but to make peace with her family.
And to the surprise of everyone, Slava shows up, impressing the townspeople with her beauty and her kind and wealthy bearing, but finds she and Tsemakh are still too far apart mentally, so she returns to Lomzhe.
During the Passover holiday, Tsemakh makes an attempt to convince Ronya's husband to stay on as a third yeshiva teacher, only annoying him.
The new rabbi moves in, and after Lag B'Omer, the first of the many religious summer vacationers (who board out by a cardboard factory out of the way in the deep woods) shows up, the very famous Reb Avraham-Shaye the Kosover, with his sister Hadassah and her children.
Into this milieu, Vova returns, now a pitiful beggar, but swearing vengeance on Tsemakh and Chaikl for getting his son to come to Valkenik in the first place.
But when he visits Chaikl in the woods, Reb Avraham-Shaye patiently and respectfully listens to Vova, who ends up reduced to tears of shame when he is told to make complete peace with those he has had trouble with, including Confrada.
The Lohoysker has become defiant, rude, openly sarcastic in his non-observance and skepticism, but with no skills except rabbinic training, he is dependent on the yeshiva for room and board.
The trustee resigns, but no one else is willing to take on the job, leading the widows to protest and the yeshiva facing eviction from the congregation that houses it.
Rav Simkha returns, and per the congregation's demands, sends Yankl away to found a yeshiva to be run by Reb Duber, he soon announces success in Amdur.
In quick succession, one yeshiva student tries to commit suicide, Reb Duber finds himself in Amdur, with Yankl gone and most of the townspeople hostile.
Yankl returns and uses Purim as an excuse to tastelessly and publicly insult the trustee, and one of the most beloved of the yeshiva students dies of his weak heart.
Tsemakh and Chaikl watch the train leave, deeply aware that their future remains forever tied to the Kosover's influence.
Placing the action of his novel in the environs of Vilna, [Lithuania], after the First World War, Grade spins an alternately moody and volcanic tale which is not only breathtaking in its polychromatic effect, but which also gives visible evidence of the profound and compassionate understanding of man's vulnerability to his own instincts.
Those portions of the book that offer pictures of East European Jewish life seem a little heavy and slap-dash, lacking in novelistic finish, as if Grade were counting too much on the keyed-in responses of his Yiddish audience.