In 1905, a group of Orthodox Jews who had moved from the Lower East Side to the Brownsville section of Brooklyn established a yeshiva, or religious school. They named it for Rabbi Chaim Berlin, a 19th Century Talmudic scholar in the Russian town of Voloshin, the birthplace of several of the founders.

Last year, because of repeated acts of vandalism and attacks on students by Negro and Puerto Rican youths, the school's administrators reluctly moved from the three‐story brick building at Eastern Parkway and Prospect Place to smaller quarters in East Flatbush.

Early Tuesday the building, which was unoccupied but still used for the storage of religious objects, books and records, was gutted by fire. Chief Fire Marshal Martin Scott said the blaze had been started accidentally by neighborhood children who had broken into the building.

Rabbi Mayer Ziegler, the executive director of the school, stood on the steps of the burned out structure yesterday, conferring with two inspectors of the Department of Buildings. They said the building would have to be razed.

“We put our loss at $150,000,” Rabbi Ziegeler said, “and we have no insurance. It was canceled last September, when a small fire was set in the synagogue on the first floor on the eve of Yom Kippur.”

The building's doors and windows had been covered with heavy wire, the rabbi said, but the intruders tore it away. Efforts to hire a watchman had failed because of the area's reputation for violence.

He said the yeshiva had hoped to sell the building, possibly to a Negro congregation, and use the funds to build an addition to the nen quarters of its primary school at 899 Winthrop Street, in East Flatbush.

Its rabbinical academy is at 350 Stone Street, but ground has been broken for three new building on Kings Highway and East 58th Street. In all, there are 1,100 male students, representing 23 states and 12 foreign countries. The school is largely supported by contributions.

Rabbi Ziegler sketched in a now familiar story of threats, petty robberies and assaults on his students by the children of Negro and Puerto Rican families who have moved into the neighborhood in increasing numhers in the nast decade.

“It seems sometimes as though they are trying to drive us away,” he said sadly.