A large crowd filled the Torah Links bais medrash in Lakewood on Sunday night, ohr l’daled Elul, for a maamad marking 100 years since the petirah of Rav Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk zt”l, author of the Ohr Somayach and Meshech Chochmah, with close to 500 more joining via live hookup.

The event was organized by Lakewood’s Machon Aleh Zayis at the initiative of R’ Dovie Safier and Rabbi Moshe Dembitzer, and sponsored primarily by R’ Dovie Safier and R’ Tzvi Tress.

Speakers included Rav Lipa Geldwerth, Rav Yaakov Drillman and Rav Uren Reich; Rabbi Shimon Szimonowitz of Machon Aleh Zayis led the program. Rav Dovid Greenwald, who discovered Rav Meir Simcha’s manuscripts in the National Library in Jerusalem in 1967 and published them, traveled from the Catskills to attend.

Machon Aleh Zayis’s new English translation of the Meshech Chochmah on Bereishis, with commentary by Rav Avrohom Wagner – the first comprehensive translation of the sefer – was released for the occasion.