About the Yanuka

He sits and teaches, with the whole Torah open before him — and people of every kind come to listen.

The Yanuka — also spelled HaYanuka, Yenuka, Yanukah or Januka (הינוקא) — is HaGaon Rav Shlomo Yehuda Beeri shlit”a. However you found his name — HaYanuka, Yenuka, Yanukah — this is his English home: every shiur, niggun, alon and tefillah, gathered in one place, free.

Why he's called “the Yanuka”

From a young age he knew an unusual amount of Torah, so people began calling him “the Yanuka” — a word from the Zohar for a young person with rare knowledge. The name stuck.

Today many people come to his shiurim, from all kinds of backgrounds. Some are simple Jews looking to grow; some are serious scholars. They come to learn and to be lifted.

His shiurim

He usually speaks without notes. A shiur often starts from a question someone asks, and from there he brings sources from all over the Torah and ties them together into one clear idea.

People say the shiurim changed how they think and how they daven. That's really the goal here — to bring his Torah to more people, in English.

His music

He loves music. After a shiur he'll often sit at the piano and play niggunim — some that others wrote, and some of his own. A few of them are on this site.

One thing he keeps teaching

A theme that comes up again and again: love every Jew, and respect every person. He teaches that people who look very different are closer than they think, and he tries to bring them together.

Tefillos

He has written many tefillos over the years — for parnassah, for a refuah, for a shidduch, for children, and more. You can read and download them here, including his latest collection.

Learn with him

Start in the Torah Library, listen to his niggunim, read the weekly alonim, or daven with his tefillos.