Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Gets $3 Million From Jim Josef Foundation

Lauded for its rigorous, traditional approach to Jewish text, innovative curriculum, cutting-edge pastoral counseling and high caliber professional training, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School (YCT), started by Rabbi Avi Weiss, is about to enter an exciting new chapter in its history by virtue of a groundbreaking challenge grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation.

 

YESHIVAT CHOVEVEI TORAH RABBINICAL SCHOOL
RECEIVES MAJOR CHALLENGE GRANT
FROM THE JIM JOSEPH FOUNDATION
 
Gift Will Enable Significant Growth and Expansion of Seminary
Dramatically Enhancing Education Training
 
April 14, 2010 (New York, NY) - Lauded for its rigorous, traditional approach to Jewish text, innovative curriculum, cutting-edge pastoral counseling and high caliber professional training, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School (YCT) is about to enter an exciting new chapter in its history by virtue of a groundbreaking challenge grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation.
 
The sum of the grant is $3 million, to be disbursed over a 5-year period. $2.5 million of the grant will be matched on a one-to one basis with the Yeshiva's own fundraising. The JJF grant is designed to enable YCT to dramatically increase its impact within the Jewish community by creating greater numbers of dynamic, uniquely prepared Orthodox pulpit and campus rabbis and Jewish educators. Significantly, it will also fund the development of a fully-realized educator's track with the same degree of professionalism, sophistication and innovation as the pulpit track.
 
The JJF gift to YCT marks the first time that the foundation has given a grant directly to a rabbinical school. The grant is an important affirmation of the school's stellar record of achievement over its first decade. In the space of ten years, YCT has enhanced communities by producing unparalleled professional Jewish leaders who have gone on to serve at major synagogues, campus Hillel chapters, prestigious day schools, camps and other important communal organizations and venues.
 
Since it appeared on the Jewish communal landscape, YCT has been widely admired for its approach to the role of the rabbi in Jewish life and society at large. This approach is rooted in the realities and challenges of the 21st century world and prepares its rabbinical students to engage with the Jewish community within the context of the larger secular society. YCT's curriculum is psychologically aware, eschewing parochialism as well as the formality often associated with the rabbinate. Instead, its training is infused with an understanding of Orthodox Judaism as open and embracing. Graduates of YCT seek to build bridges, share knowledge and collaborate with those from other Jewish denominations and beyond.
 
Founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss in 2001, YCT occupies the avant garde of the Modern Orthodox world in a variety of significant ways. Its approach is holistic and inclusive, committed to engaging with Jews of all denominations and people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. Having celebrated its 10th anniversary just this past month, YCT moved to its new facility in Riverdale in December, 2009.
 
"I am deeply grateful to the JJF for their belief and trust in YCT. This important gift reflects their respect for the extraordinary impact that we believe our graduates are having in synagogues, universities, schools, camps and campuses all over the country," said Rabbi Weiss.
 
"We are deeply honored to have been awarded this significant sum of funding from the Jim Joseph Foundation, which will enable us to deepen and expand our mission to educate and train rabbis who embody a Judaism which is authentic, inspiring and empowering," said Rabbi Dov Linzer, Dean and Rosh HaYeshiva of YCT. "This award serves as a testament to our demonstrated success and as a vote of confidence in our vision for the rabbinate. The JJF grant will allow us to continue to produce unparalled rabbis, innovative and inspiring educators and transformative communal leaders for the Jewish community."
 
Steven Lieberman, Chairman of the Board of YCT, said that the JJF gift reflects the fact that YCT was able to become a "major league institution" within the space of its first ten years; a remarkable achievement. "YCT's influence is obvious and quantifiable," he stated. "In a very short period of time, YCT has changed the face of the American rabbinate, educational and organizational world.  From synagogue pulpits to college campuses and everywhere in between, YCT is a force for positive leadership, values and change."
 
Al Levitt, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation noted that JJF is pleased with the opportunity to provide capacity support and challenge grant funding for YCT.  The investment deepens JJF's strategic commitment to the preparation of high quality educators.  Currently, graduates of YCT populate many organizations which the JJF supports."
 
Howard Jonas, Chairman of the Board of IDT and former Chairman of the Board of YCT termed the JJF grant "transformative,"
 
"As a religious, educational and communal institution, YCT is the ultimate game-changer," he said. "Only one decade after its inception, it has profoundly changed the face of Modern Orthodox leadership. I cannot praise the Jim Joseph Foundation enough for their commitment and vision. They are truly helping to change the very essence of the global Jewish community by giving YCT golden wings."
 
In order to ensure the school's sustainability, the JJF grant requires that YCT strengthen its fundraising capacities. "Indeed, with the announcement of the JJF grant, YCT immediately launched a new fundraising campaign in which new funds raised will be matched, dollar for dollar, by JJF," said Naomi Smook, Vice President of Institutional Advancement.
 
For further information about the $3 million YCT grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation or to request an interview with Naomi Smook, Steven Lieberman or anyone else connected with this story, please contact Shira Dicker at 917.403.3989 or by email at shira.dicker@sd-media.com.
 
Please visit Yeshivat Chovevei Torah at www.yctorah.org.
 
About Yeshivat Chovevei Torah
 
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School (YCT) believes that the future of Orthodoxy depends on our becoming a movement that expands outward non-dogmatically and cooperatively to encompass the needs of the larger Jewish community and the world. For this vision to succeed, we require a new breed of leaders - rabbis who are open, non-judgmental, knowledgeable, empathetic, and eager to transformOrthodoxy into a movement that meaningfully and respectfully interacts with all Jews, regardless of affiliation, commitment, or background.

YCT is committed to training and placing open Modern Orthodox rabbis. We seek the best and the brightest that Modern Orthodoxy has to offer. Each student accepted into our yeshiva is chosen through a rigorous process that employs the highest academic standards and scrutinizes every applicant's character, make-up, and overall ability to perform and excel as a leader of the Jewish community. Our Modern Orthodox rabbinical school cultivates a love of Torah, a philosophy of inclusiveness, and a passion for leadership. The entire curriculum is taught at the highest levels of academic excellence by leading scholars and talmidei chakhamim. Upon ordination, each graduate commits to serving in the rabbinate.
 
About the Jim Joseph Foundation
 
The Jim Joseph Foundation, established in 2006, is committed to a sustained program of grant making in pursuit of a vision that leads to ever-increasing numbers of young Jews engaged in ongoing Jewish learning and choosing to live vibrant Jewish lives.  The Foundation manages close to $725 million of assets, using all of its resources to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning for young Jews in the United States.

Comments

[Zalman Alpert]

Once again PR reigns supreme in the US.
Since the time rabbinical training began in modern times , scholarship was stressed. This not only includes the classic yeshivoth like Volozhin, Mir, Pressburg, Chachmei Lublin, but also the modern rabbinical schools like Breslau , Vienna, Hildesheimer , Hochschule, Budapest etc.
Yes there were a few mediccore schools like Jews College and the Paris Seminary.
YCT may be training rabbis to act as pastors and preachers , but whre is the scholarship both academic and rabbinic..
A glance at their annual volume of student writing reveals a sort of sophomoric knowledge of Jewish stuides - academic and rabbinic.
Is this the future for the O
rthodox rabbinate in the US ?Would we want lour law schools to look like this ?
The school has no serious library to speak of, besides their dean Dr. Linzer , there are hardly any known scholars serving their faculty on a full time basis and little or no serious research has come out of YCT.
There are serious modern Orthodox scholars who should be added to the faculty men like L. Kaplan,M. Shapiro snd others.
So if we see the future of the Orthodox rabbinate in America as the training of Jewish ministers like Jews College in London (now closed because it could not meee the needs of a new educated Orthodoxy), then YCT is fine, if we see rabbinic training as the training of men who are also scholars and produce schoalrly works , then YCT is nothing to boast about.
And all I say has nothing to do with hashkofa just with quality of rabbinic education.
The school needs to beef up its Talmudic program and design a plan to expose its students to serious graduate level Jewish academic studies.It that area JTS is light years ahead.
Although it has nothing to do with my comments I add that I am emloyed at Yeshiva Univrsity.

[Dutch]

Does that mean more woman rabbis?

[Chaptsem]

Pie in the sky. Woe to judism if its this school that is going to teach orthodoxy. Please. Cut the baloney

[Aleksandr Sigalov]

The JJF grant will allow us to continue to produce unparalled rabbis, innovative and inspiring educators and transformative communal leaders for the Jewish community.

Shmaryah, you have truly chosen the right profession, my friend!

I bet the time will come when you will have to write a post or two about most of their alumni. You know, Rubashkin style?!!

lol;

P.S. So this is where all them "rabbis" come from....

[masortiman]

unfortunately JTS grads do not meet everyone's needs - and YU, AFAICT, continues to move to the right.

The foundation in quesiton also supports programs at Kehilat hadar, BBYO, the Hartman institute,birthright, etc. This seems of a piece with that.

[Aaron Friedman]

It seems that the template for critiquing a yeshiva with a modern Orthodox orientation has not changed in the past 40 years.

Much of what Zalman Alpert writes about YCT was the template critique of YU when I was growing up in the early 70s. To use Mr. Alpert's language, here is what those trained in Mir, Telz, Torah Vodaas, Chaim Berlin, Lakewood etc. often told me:

"YU may be training rabbis to act as pastors and preachers , but where is the rabbinic scholarship?
A glance at their annual volume of student writing reveals a sort of sophomoric knowledge of gemara learning.
Besides their dean JB (the perjorative term used for Rabbi Soloveitchik), and a few talmidei chachamim who came from Lita and went to work there for parnasa, lo aleinu, there are hardly any known scholars serving their faculty on a full time basis."

Of course, the critique of YU said more then about its proponents' fears than about the institution - and the same is perhaps true today.

By finding YCT lacking as a research institution, Mr. Alpert shows a near-total misunderstanding of the purpose of YCT. YCT graduates are required to devote themselves to the people of klal Yisrael - in shuls, yeshivas and Jewish community organizations. Their training for this lofty career is unparalleled - and for that reason it has been mimicked by other other modern Orthodox institutions.

To fault YCT for not producing academic Judaic scholars is akin to faulting Satmar institutions for not producing experts in the differences between Divrei Hayamim and Melachim, Lubavitch yeshivas for not producing experts in the kellalei sfek sfeka of the Shach, Lakewood for not producing experts in the Piyutim of Yanai and Hakallir, Mir for not producing experts in the writings of R. Tzadok Hakohen etc. etc. The point is that Torah and Jewish scholarship have enormous breadth and each institution has its focus.

YCT's focus and shelichus is to be mekarev Jewish people to their Father in Heaven and to connect them to their fellow Jews in accordance with halacha and in it has been recognized as excelling not just by the Jim Joseph Foundation but by so many inside and outside the Jewish community.

In the interest of disclosure, I add that my wife works at YCT. Aware of Mr. Alpert's critique but more to be inspired by what I know is an admirable makom Torah, I have spent a few days in the Beis Midrash at YCT and attended regular shiurim of Rabbi Linzer (he does not have a doctorate - although it would be more "convenient" if he did). I have studied in other, well-regarded yeshivas and was impressed by the level of learning of the bochurim at YCT and of the shiurim. Hopefully, as other yeshivas continue to learn from YCT's successes, the entire Jewish community will benefit from haramas keren Hatorah.

Aaron Friedman

[BronxJew]

Since the Steinsaltz and Artscroll editions of Gemara came out, how many people are left that actually force themselves to learn from the Vilna Shas, relying on their hard-earned knowledge of Aramaic and "Sugya methodology"? I would posit fewer than at any time in recent memory. You can see Satmer guys holding Hebrew Artscroll Gemaras. And in JTS the students use it as well. RIETS is not all it is cracked up to be. They don't teach Aramaic or "Chukei HaSugya" - so it is no wonder that many of their Musmachim would be Farblunjet like an Eskimo in the desert if you asked them to make a Leining on a random Blatt Gemara from a Masechta they never learned. The truth is, no orthodox Semicha program trains the students to be competent experts in Aramaic, Rabbinic Hebrew, etc. The learning is piecemeal. For example, when I was in MYP at YU, the Magid Shiur would come in every morning with a packet of xeroxes - many times dozens of pages. On each page was a different Rishon, sometimes a Teshuva from a Shu'T sefer, etc. We had to learn whatever was underlined or asterisked, then prepare for the Sugya Shiur. Everything was so Farmisht, because that approach to learning presents the Gemara as a great mystery, which we can only uncover by learning snipets of disparate Sefarim written by Rishonim and Acharonim with widely varying Shitot. One of my Ramim would go out of his way to bring to our attention every esoteric Litvishe Sefer Chidushim - but he would avoid Tosfos like the plague, and his knowledge of Poskim was mediocre at best. In fact he would tell us, "I'm not a big Talmid Chacham in Halacha".
So the truth is - we're all fooling ourselves. Learning EVERYWHERE has become piecemeal. I remember telling an administrator at YU that there is a syndrome among all RIETS graduates: They can't learn just ONE sefer from beginning to end, without ridiculous interruptions on each and every line. They learn one part of the sefer and then they're done.
The proper way to learn is to master Aramaic (first Biblical - by going through Daniel & Ezra), then Targumic (going through Onkelos and Pseudo-Jonathan on the Parsha over the course of a year), then Babylonian (using Margolis' famous grammar, and that of Moses Marcus. I learned much of my Aramaic from Professor Isaac Jerusalmi's book "Nissei DiShlama BeYama DeTalmuda" which every HUC rabbinical student had to master before any text course in Talmud. And of course, all students should learn Mielziner's immortal Intro. To Talmud).
But who learns like that? Semicha programs like to pretend that their Talmidim are mastering text and have real ability at learning - but that's simply not the case anymore. A friend of mine got two Yoreh-Yoreh Smichas in one year (one from Israel and the other from a well-respected black- hat yeshiva in New York. You know how he learned Hilchos Basar BeChalav, Shechita, etc.? ONLINE! They all have laptops, they all listen to tapes and they all use Artscroll or Steinsaltz - the easy way out.
So while Zalmen is correct that YCT doesn't really produce a Bar Hachi who will toil in Shas and Poskim THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY all his days, which Yeshivot - Israeli included - really do nowadays? Because of all these translations, tapes, MP3's of Shas and Poskim, almost no one will be left in a hundred years who can learn without these crutches. For what is the impetus?

[BronxJew]

I remember when the late Rabbi Dr. Walter Wurzburger, z'l said, "You're looking for a good, well-rounded Smicha program? RIETS is not it. Go to RIETS only for the Halachic concepts you will learn along the way."

[IH]

“In 1932, the following anonymous placard was distributed in Orthodox synagogues throughout the east coast: ‘We Jews of New York discovered that in the Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elchanan ... there is a nest of atheism and Apikursus (denial of God). Therefore we do warn and announce, that you should not send your children or the children of your acquaintances into this Yeshiva until you will find out what is going on in the Yeshiva, who is responsible for the terrible situation, and how it is to be remedied.’ [...] Despite the presence of prominent scholars in RIETS, men whose abilities were acknowledged by all who moved within the orbit of talmudic learning, opposition to Yeshiva's philosophy was constant. Sometimes it was rancorous. When the famed head of the yeshiva in Baranowicz, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, visited the United States, he praised the more traditional institution, Mesivta Torah Vodaath, and condemned Yeshiva College. He refused, despite personal pleas by Dr. Revel, to set foot in the building. Rabbi Wasserman's view was that although philosophy had been studied in the past by gedolim (giants in scholarship) such as the Vilna Gaon, in these times there were no individuals of sufficient stature to study such subjects without risking their faith.”

From Helmreich’s “The world of the yeshiva: an intimate portrait of Orthodox Jewry” (http://tinyurl.com/237s8p6).

[Abracadabra]

IH - What is the point of posting this? I'm not challenging you, I just am trying to understand. I usually enjoy your posts, and would like to hear your thoughts on this subject.

[ruthie]

avi weiss or whatever he calls himself is such a phony.
all he cares about is people with money.
and if they don't share with him, you won't be invited again.
give me a gun. he hurt someone close to me....a guy with money, became religious, felt so good with weiss, weiss found out he was quite wealthy, didn't get money, friend was disinvited. now not religious.
avi weiss if you're reading this....you're such a phony and you know it.

[RiverdaleApikorus]

I totally agree with you Ruthie. I live in YCT's backyard and know many of the players including Weiss. The man is a firstclass mazik. I also know a person who was personally deeply hurt by this man. He is after publicity and power and unfortunately is far from being a mentsch. Woe onto us that we have such Jewish leaders today!

[masortiman]

"all he cares about is people with money"

because no one else trying to build up a yeshiva or other institution is like that, eh?

[Avi L.]

Avi Weiss is a hero and has changed thousands of Jewish lives. How can anyone speak negatively of this man.