Currently located in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, New York, YCT's mission is to educate and place rabbis who are "open, non-judgmental, knowledgeable, empathetic, and eager to transform Orthodoxy into a movement that meaningfully and respectfully interacts with all Jews, regardless of affiliation, commitment, or background."[2] Its core values include a passionate commitment to the study of Torah and the scrupulous observance of halakha (Jewish law); intellectual openness and critical thinking in one's religious life; expanding the role of women in Judaism; commitment to the broader Jewish community; and a responsibility to improve the world and to care for every human being in it regardless of faith.[3] However, many establishment institutions in the Orthodox community in America, including the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America and Agudath Israel of America have pushed back against YCT, choosing to frame it as an entity which has strayed from traditional Torah Judaism.[4][5]
YCT's rabbinic education program combines a classical curriculum in Tanakh, Talmud, and the codes of Jewish law with a program in pastoral counseling, leadership retreats, education in fundraising, and other realities of contemporary religious leadership.[6]
YCT ordained its first graduating class of rabbis in June 2004 and has continued to do so every June since. As of June 2019, the school had ordained 134 rabbis and has a placement rate of nearly 100%.[7] Its current president and Rosh Yeshiva (head of school) is Rabbi Dov Linzer.
In addition to its rabbinical studies program, the yeshiva offers a public Jewish educational program in association with the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale at its Bronx location. YCT also runs a variety of events open to the entire Jewish community, including its annual yemei iyun ("study days") on Bible and Jewish thought and a public lecture series.
History
The origins of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah go back to 1996 when Rabbis Avi Weiss and Saul Berman founded a program known as MeORoT that provided supplemental lectures on issues in liberal Orthodoxy to rabbinical students enrolled in Yeshiva University. At the time, the fellowship was co-sponsored by Yeshiva University, Edah, and Weiss's synagogue, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.
In September 1999, Weiss and Linzer launched Yeshivat Chovevei Torah as an undergraduate learning program primarily for students at Columbia University and Barnard College. The YCT University Program had Linzer as its Rosh HaYeshiva and was housed at Congregation Ramath Orah, a Modern Orthodox congregation on 110th Street in Manhattan.
In January 2000, the leadership of the YCT university program, which consisted of Weiss, Berman, Linzer, and Dov Weiss, decided to create a rabbinical school that would officially open in September 2000. In September 2000, the rabbinical school welcomed its first class of seven students. After spending five years housed at Columbia's Hillel, the school left Manhattan in the summer of 2010 and moved to the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.
Controversies over YCT came to a head when, in 2006, YCT applied for membership in the Rabbinical Council of America, the rabbinical body affiliated with the Orthodox Union, the largest North American Modern and Centrist Orthodox body. YCT subsequently withdrew its application when it became apparent that the application would be denied.[6]
YCT had ordained 27 rabbis by June 2006 and 54 by June 2009.[8] YCT graduates, who are not eligible for RCA membership, can join the International Rabbinic Fellowship, an organization co-founded in 2008 by Avi Weiss and Marc Angel.[9]
Terminology
In the first 15 years of its history, YCT described itself as an Open Orthodox institution and its mission statement made heavy use of the term (Avi Weiss had coined it).[10] The term provoked harsh criticism, though. At a May 2014 gala, one member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, called Open Orthodoxy heretical.[11] In the fall of 2015, the Agudath Israel of America, an Ultra-Orthodox rabbinical group, called Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat, Open Orthodoxy, and other affiliated entities as similar to other dissident movements throughout Jewish history having rejected basic tenets of Judaism.[12][13][11]
Since then, YCT has distanced itself from the term. In an interview with The Jewish Week in August 2017, Rabbi Asher Lopatin, the school's then-president, said: "When they say, 'Open Orthodox,' I say, 'We are Modern Orthodox. We are a full part of Modern Orthodoxy.'"[10] The affiliated women's rabbinical seminary, Yeshivat Maharat, also uses "Modern Orthodox" to describe itself.[10]
Curriculum and pastoral counseling program
YCT's curriculum is supplemented by a strong focus on the Bible and Jewish thought. YCT states that the classical approaches to subject matters are complemented by academic and innovative methodologies.
One of the more innovative areas of YCT's curriculum is an unprecedented emphasis on pastoral care and professional development. Whereas it is common in other rabbinical schools to offer a semester or year of pastoral counseling courses, YCT's program spans the entire four-year curriculum. The pastoral counseling program is taught by leading psychiatric professionals and includes formal classroom instruction, role-playing, clinical experience, and mentored fieldwork. The program places particular emphasis on topics that rabbis regularly encounter; topics such as religious doubt and personal change; rites of passage; adolescence; substance abuse; marital and family problems; sexual function and dysfunction; homosexuality; domestic violence; loss, tragedy, and bereavement; and response to catastrophe.[6]
The first-year courses are organized around basic principles of counseling. The second-year courses follow the life cycle, giving an overview of normal development as well as addressing potential difficulties. In their third and fourth years, students take seminars in chaplaincy, marital and family therapy, and psychology and religion. Fieldwork with direct clinical supervision is an essential part of the curriculum.
One of the other hallmarks of the YCT pastoral counseling program is the introduction of the process group. A common feature of graduate psychology programs is a process group consisting of students from a given class year who meet weekly with a mental health professional throughout the full four years of the program. In this completely confidential setting, students are free to explore issues of faith, authority, training, personal situation, etc.[6]
Linzer has been serving as the president of YCT since January 2018, and he succeeded Asher Lopatin, who was the second president of the school from July 2013 to July 2018, following Avi Weiss. Linzer had previously served as the dean of YCT from 2007 to 2014, succeeding Weiss. Since 2022, the dean of YCT has been Rabbi Haggai Resnikoff.[14]
Other faculty members include rabbis Ysoscher Katz, Nathaniel Helfgot, Chaim Marder, Miriam Schacter, and Michelle Friedman.[15]
Student body and alumni
When the rabbinical school was founded, its first class had only 7 members. After what Yeshiva University's student newspaper, The Commentator, called in 2002 an "aggressive marketing campaign", many young men who previously would have considered Yeshiva University's rabbinical school are now attending YCT.[16] A 2007 YU Commentator article reported YCT's enrollment to be 43 full-time students.[17]
The first rabbi was ordained in 2003.[18] According to a 2006 news article, YCT graduates about 10 students per year,[19] and in a 2009 story it was reported that there were 54 total YCT graduates.[8]
As of 2019, YCT has ordained over 130 rabbis serving throughout the U.S. and around the world in synagogues, on college campuses, as teachers and administrators, chaplains, religious entrepreneurs, leaders of Jewish institutions, and more.[3]
Absorption of EDAH functions
In July 2006, YCT officials announced that they would absorb some of the personnel and functions of the liberal Orthodox advocacy organization EDAH, which had announced its closure and became defunct.[20] YCT assumed EDAH's journal, website, and audio-visual library. The school also took on EDAH's founding director, Rabbi Saul Berman, for a position as Director of Continuing Rabbinic Education.[21]
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, (Yeshivat Maharat notwithstanding), accepts only male candidates for ordination. However, YCT, unlike a number of rabbis and institutions within Orthodox Judaism, has promoted expanded roles for women in ritual life and religious leadership, in contravention of Jewish Law. Founder Avi Weiss explained:
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, as an Orthodox institution, requires that its students daven only in synagogues with mechitzot [partitions for the separation of men and women]. The phenomenon of women receiving aliyot in a mechitza minyan is currently being debated on both a halachic and communal level within the Modern Orthodox community. YCT Rabbinical School does not currently take a position on this issue.[22]
In June 2009, Weiss created the title MaHaRaT for Sara Hurwitz. He expressed his desire to have called her a rabbi, stating "She can do 95 percent of what other rabbis do".[8] She was later titled "Rabba", a feminine version of the word "rabbi", despite female rabbis in other movements being called "rabbi". This led to complaints from the RCA, which led to Weiss stating he would not name future graduates as "rabba". Weiss subsequently resigned from the RCA.[23] However, Yeshivat Maharat, which Weiss founded, allows its ordainees to choose their own titles, and in 2015 ordained Yaffa Epstein took the title Rabba.[24] Also in 2015, Lila Kagedan was ordained by that same organization, and chose for herself the title Rabbi, making her their first graduate to take that title.[25]
Modern Orthodox Judaism is a movement within Orthodox Judaism that attempts to synthesize Jewish values and the observance of Jewish law with the modern world.
Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was a major American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, and modern Jewish philosopher. He was a scion of the Lithuanian Jewish Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty.
Agudath Israel of America is an American organization that represents Haredi Orthodox Jews. It is loosely affiliated with the international World Agudath Israel. Agudah seeks to meet the needs of the Haredi community, advocates for its religious and civil rights, and services its constituents through charitable, educational, and social service projects across North America.
Edah was a Modern Orthodox Jewish organization, generally associated with the liberal wing of Orthodox Judaism in the United States and with the Religious Zionism movement of Israel. Its headquarters were located in Manhattan, New York City.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of the Jewish religion.
The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) is an Open Orthodox Jewish organization providing educational services on women's issues, with the aim of expanding "the spiritual, ritual, intellectual, and political opportunities for women within the framework of Halakha." It was incorporated on April 14, 1998, with Jewish-American writer Blu Greenberg as its first president. It is active in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) haCohen Weiss is an American Open Orthodox ordained rabbi, author, teacher, lecturer, and activist who led the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in The Bronx, New York until 2015. He is the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for men and Yeshivat Maharat for women, rabbinical seminaries that are tied to Open Orthodoxy, a breakaway movement that Weiss originated, which is to the left of Modern Orthodox Judaism and to the right of Conservative Judaism. He is co-founder of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a rabbinical association that is a liberal alternative to the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, and founder of the grassroots organization Coalition for Jewish Concerns – Amcha.
Open Orthodox Judaism is a Jewish religious movement with a commitment to following halacha, increased emphasis on intellectual openness, and a more expansive role for women. The term was coined in 1997 by Avi Weiss, who views halacha as permitting more flexibility than the normal practices of Orthodox Judaism.
Congregation Beth Israel is a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Berkeley, California, in the United States. Established in 1924 as the Berkeley Hebrew Center, it traces its origins to the First Hebrew Congregation of Berkeley, founded in 1909. It was Berkeley's first synagogue and remains its oldest. Lay-led for four decades, it hired its first rabbi, Saul Berman, in 1963.
Asher Lopatin is the Director of Community Relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor. He is an American pluralist, Open Orthodox rabbi and leader of Kehillat Etz Chayim, an Open Orthodox synagogue in Oak Park, MI. He is also the founder and executive director of the Detroit National Center for Civil Discourse, which has run a Fellowship in Civil Discourse at Wayne State University since September 2019. Previously, he was the President of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (2013–2018) and the spiritual leader of Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation in Chicago before that. He is a Rhodes Scholar and a Council on Foreign Relations member.
Rabbi Doctor Eugene B. Korn is a lecturer, scholar and educator. He lives in Jerusalem and was formerly Academic Director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC) in Jerusalem. He was also co-director of its Institute for Theological Inquiry. Korn was the founding editor of Meorot: A Forum for Modern Orthodox Discourse, based at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York City.
Women rabbis and Torah scholars are individual Jewish women who are recognized for their studies of the Jewish religious tradition and often combine their study with rabbinical ordination. Ordination of women has grown since the 1970s with over 1,200 Jewish women receiving formal ordination. The majority of these women are associated with Progressive Jewish denominations. In Orthodox Judaism, the matter of ordination is more complex. Although a significant number of Orthodox women have been ordained as rabbis, many major Orthodox Jewish communities and institutions do not accept the change. In an alternative approach, other Orthodox Jewish institutions train women for various Jewish religious leadership roles and may entail training in Jewish Law although no formal rabbinic ordination is granted. Instead, alternate titles are used. Yet, despite this alteration in title, these women are often perceived as equivalent to ordained rabbis.
Orthodox Jewish feminism is a movement in Orthodox Judaism which seeks to further the cause of a more egalitarian approach to Jewish practice within the bounds of Jewish Law. The major organizations of this movement is the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) in North America, and Women of the Wall (WOW) and its affiliates in Israel and internationally, known as The International Committee for Women of the Wall (ICWOW). In Israel, the leading Orthodox feminist organization is Kolech, founded by Dr. Chana Kehat. In Australia, there is one Orthodox partnership minyan, Shira Hadasha, in Melbourne.
Sara Hurwitz is an Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader aligned with the "Open Orthodox" faction of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States. She is considered by some to be the first female Orthodox rabbi. She serves at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale as Rabba and she is the president and co-founder of Yeshivat Maharat, both in Riverdale, New York.
Rabbi Dov Linzer is the President and Rabbinic Head of the Modern Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Riverdale, New York. He is a teacher, lecturer, podcaster, and author.
Yeshivat Maharat is a Jewish educational institution in The Bronx, New York, which is the first Orthodox-affiliated yeshiva in North America to ordain women. The word Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for phrase manhiga hilkhatit rukhanit Toranit, denoting a female "leader of Jewish law spirituality and Torah." Semikha is awarded to graduates after a 3- or 4-year-long program composed of intensive studies of Jewish law, Talmud, Torah, Jewish thought, leadership training, and pastoral counseling. The ordination functions as a credentialed, albeit controversial, pathway for women in the Orthodox Jewish community to serve as clergy members.
Lila Kagedan is a Canadian-born Jewish rabbi who in 2016 became the first woman with the title rabbi to be hired by an Open Orthodox synagogue. This occurred when Mount Freedom Jewish Center in New Jersey, which is open Modern Orthodox, hired Kagedan to join their "spiritual leadership team." She is currently the rabbi at Walnut Street Synagogue, an Open Orthodox synagogue in Massachusetts.
The International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF) is a Modern Orthodox, rabbinical organization founded by Rabbis Avi Weiss and Marc D. Angel in 2007 and soon elected Rabbi Barry Gelman as its president. The group is open to graduates of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. The group's current president is Rabbi Yonah Berman. The Executive Director is Rabbi Jason Herman. The group is noted for being the only Orthodox rabbinical association to admit women rabbis as members.
Nathaniel Helfgot is an American rabbi. He leads Congregation Netivot Shalom of Teaneck, New Jersey, and served as president of the International Rabbinic Fellowship.
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