In 1775, the Spanish General O'Reilly attacked the city of Algiers and was successfully repulsed by the Dey of Algiers, Mohammed ibn Uman. Tradition has it that flames came out of the graves of the great Rabbis Isaac ben Sheshet and Solomon ben Simon Duran and contributed to the Spanish defeat. To celebrate the miracle of having escaped Spanish rule, the Jews of Algiers instituted a "Purim" on the 11th of Tammuz.
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R. Elchanan Bunem Wasserman headed a famous yeshivah in Baranovitch (in what is now Belarus), attracting many bright students. At the outbreak of World War II, he fled with the yeshivah to Lithuania. In 1941, when the Nazis broke their pact with the Soviets and overran Lithuania, he was one of the thousands of Jews who met their deaths, sanctifying G‑d’s name.
R. Elchanan authored Kovetz Shiurim, a collection of Talmudic classes he delivered at the yeshivah.
Link: A Mother’s Comfort
We don’t learn Torah to gain knowledge—not even divine knowledge. At the time you are learning Torah, your mind itself is divine.
Your mind wraps itself in divine modalities. Your soul twirls and rises in a divine dance. As you wrestle with divine words, pathways and wisdom, you merge with them, so that your entire being becomes Torah.
We learn Torah because it is a mitzvah—the mitzvah of merging your mind with the mind of G‑d.