Noga Fisher, representing the Beren family, and OTS Chancellor Rabbi Shlomo  Riskin unveil the plaque at the  dedication of the Israel Henry Beren  Residence Complex.

Extensive construction and landscaping on the Beren Campus has already laid the physical groundwork for such a learning community: at the start of the academic year, ten families moved into brand new homes in the just-dedicated Israel Henry Beren Residence Complex, planting the seeds for a thriving young Torah neighborhood. “There’s definitely a new spirit here,” says Sharona Hassan, who, with her husband Ben and infant daughter, has moved into one of the new units. “The neighborhood now has a feeling of newness which, along with Rabbi Zeff’s approach, is really energizing the campus and motivating us to get involved.”

Sharona has been instrumental in organizing a women’s learning program on campus, providing activities for young children while their mothers are at the shiurim. Ben has organized special teaching sessions for new students, including a popular “Tea and Torah” class. “Being part of a learning community is about both giving and gaining,” he says.

Unique Among Yeshivot

The expanded and improved Beren Campus will enhance the appeal of OTS schools for new students, predicts Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, an OTS alumnus who recently became executive director of the campus. “We provide a uniquely intelligent and sensitive yeshiva experience for young men who are college students or recent graduates,” he says.

“We are the only yeshiva catering to men with university backgrounds which is proud to be modern Orthodox and religious Zionist in nature,” stresses rosh yeshiva Zeff. “It is our mission to supply the modern Orthodox world with rabbis and educators who understand where their constituents come from and what they need. If we graduate ten such young men each year, we’re already changing the world!”

A Proper Home for Women’s Torah Learning

Like the men’s campus, OTS’ Yaakov and Channa Tilles Campus for women is also undergoing extensive physical change. Renovations on the existing building and the construction of an adjoining structure have already begun. Ultimately, the complex will house all of OTS’ groundbreaking study initiatives for women, including the Midreshet Lindenbaum programs, the Monica Dennis Goldberg School for Women Advocates and its Yad L’Isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline – along with an enlarged beit midrash, new classrooms, an auditorium, dining hall and refurbished dormitories.

“Our students deserve a space that reflects the importance of women’s learning and signals the potential of their accomplishments, for themselves as well as for the broader Jewish community,” says OTS chancellor Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. “Right now, most of our women’s programs are housed in an aging, cramped building. The beit midrash is inadequate for our large student body, forcing students to study in shifts. What message do these accommodations give to the women – and, indeed, Jewish society as a whole – about the importance of Torah study for women? Our goal is to create an appropriate home for all of OTS’ pioneering programs for women – a center buzzing with creativity and innovation that will be a key source of leadership for the global Jewish community.”

Learning Leadership

Three of the newest programs at Midreshet Lindenbaum continue to embody this bold spirit and initiative in blazing new trails for women.

The latest women’s study program to open on the Tilles campus is Shachar, which enables women who have completed their army or national service to focus on the relationship of Torah study and activism in tikkun olam. Ten young women are now learning full-time in the program, concentrating on Torah sources relating to issues such as social justice, tzedaka and the disabled in society. As the program progresses, they will select one of these issues and build a hands-on project aimed at fostering social change.

Nine women are enrolled in the grueling Women’s Leadership Program (”Chachamot”) as it enters its second year, studying high-level Talmud and halacha – Jewish law – as well as psychology, social work and other skills which will qualify them to assume leadership roles in the Jewish community. The program’s rotating curriculum will repeat every three years, enabling new students to join at the beginning of each school year.

Currently, the participants – all highly-accomplished women with extensive backgrounds in Torah study – are learning the Talmudic tractate of Shabbat and Hilchot Shabbat – the laws of the Sabbath. “We have found that there is no place in the world that teaches women halacha in depth,” says Rabbi Ohad Tehar Lev, the program’s director. “We place an especially strong emphasis on this very challenging subject.” As a result, at the end of the first academic year, all students scored high marks on their final exams – which were the equivalent of tests taken by male rabbinical students.

With alumnae of the first one-year Educator Fellowships now teaching in Jewish day schools in England and North America, nine new fellows have begun the intensive program, which prepares outstanding young women to teach in Diaspora Jewish schools. Director Rabbi Stanley Peerless reports that beginning this year, each of the fellows will prepare an individual research project, oriented toward practical application. Topics include values-education in Jewish high schools, teaching the philosophy of Rav Kook, teaching halacha and spirituality, and developing a curriculum for teaching about sexuality and substance abuse in Orthodox day schools.

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