 At age 12 Michel Yehuda began learning in a "yeshiva ketana" (the equivalent of high school) in the town of Rakov, boarding with his uncle.He marked his bar mitzvah there in 1929 without his parents.A few years later, he journeyed to Vilna in order to be treated by an eye specialist, and joined the yeshiva of Rameilles under Rabbi Shlomo Heiman.