A RI yeshiva experience

By Jonathan Rubin

jrubin@jfri.org

PROVIDENCE – It’s 8:11 a.m., and an important decision is being contemplated in the kitchen at the New England Rabbinical College.

“How do you make a hard-boiled egg, anyway?” asks Berish Edelman, 19.

Some early risers are eating Crispix with Lactaid milk, or devouring a recently arrived shipment of babkas and rugelach from New York.

Edelman calls his father on his cell phone to get some advice, then changes his mind and has a few buttered rolls and some apple juice. He laughs with fellow students, and one by one they say a quick Birkat Hamazon (prayer after meals) and file upstairs to begin their day of study. A medley of topics is on the agenda — ethics, law, history, public speaking — all from ancient Jewish texts. They’ll be hitting the books, almost non-stop, from nine in the morning until ten at night. It’s an intense schedule that’s more or less the same all week – except on Shabbat.

If you live in Providence, you’ve probably passed by the Rabbinical College dozens of times without even knowing it – it resides in a large nondescript building on Blackstone Boulevard.

Inside is a self-contained universe — dorms, classrooms, sanctuary, common rooms and dining area all in one. The goal of the yeshiva bocher (rabbinical college student) is twofold: To bring himself closer to God through immersion in the Torah and the millennia of Rabbinic commentary that followed, and to improve his character and intellect and choose his future career.

Students dress to impress every day. Rather than hemp necklaces or concert tee-shirts, the bocherim, all male, wear suit trousers and white shirts. Underneath their clothes is a tallit (prayer shawl.)

Judaism is as omnipresent every day as the mezuzah on each doorway.

To an outsider, a day in the life of a bocher is study and hard work. It’s also college without girls — observant Orthodox Jews believe in the separation of men and women after puberty, so the chance of meeting a future wife at a group study session is just about zero. Some students will marry while in school, but usually through the help of a matchmaker.

The 25 students pay about $11,000 a year in tuition and come mostly from Baltimore and New York, although a few are Providence natives. Some have beards, most have side locks (peyes) and all wear yarmulkes.

From the ranks of the bocherim will come not only rabbis but teachers — both Jewish and secular — and a host of other professionals ranging from lawyers to accountants.

The yeshiva’s charge is not only to create menshen — or respected men — but b’nai Torah — sons of Torah, or young Talmudic scholars.

Learning generator

While its primary charge is to the intellectual, moral and spiritual development of its students, the yeshiva’s influence reaches far beyond its walls. It’s a place of study almost 24 hours a day and a hub of Jewish education radiating out to children, teens and adults in the greater Orthodox community.

Ezra Felder, 7, stops by on Saturday nights at the successful father-son learning program called “Motzei Shabbos Live.” Boys at the pre-Bar Mitzvah age learn about the weekly Torah portion from literature and reference books provided by the yeshiva. The bocherim run the program, buy and distribute prizes for good attendance or excellent scholarship, and hold a barbecue at the end of the year. The program’s a big hit, and an impressive sight — young boys gleefully crowding into a building with the sole purpose of study.

“You get to spend time with friends, too,” Felder says. His friend, Eliyahu Raskin, 11, says that he enjoys studying with his father. And, he adds, “the prizes don’t hurt, either.”

The avenues for study are legion. David Gotteleib, a math professor at Brown, attends lectures at the yeshiva, and has attended a 6 a.m. study of Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud a day.

David Yavner, whose son studies at the yeshiva, might participate in the morning Shacharit prayers at 7 a.m. Asher Kaplan finds greater depths of understanding the Talmud by studying with a yeshiva student. Grade-school students from the Providence Hebrew Day School (PHDS) are tutored weekly by the bocherim. The remaining two male students at Providence’s Orthodox high school spend their mornings studying with rabbis at the yeshiva.

Husbands learn at the yeshiva and disseminate the words of the rabbis to their families at Shabbat tables. Adults, ranging from their late 20s to 70s, pop in whenever they can to study with the bocherim or to sit in at a lecture.

Rabbinical College graduates have filtered into almost every layer of the community - Rabbi Mordechai Nissel became dean of PHDS, Rabbi Yosef Taitelbaum is a sofer (scribe) and a mohel (performs circumcision for newborn boys). Rabbi Naftali Karp is now the yeshiva’s executive director, and Rabbi Yechezkel Yudkowsky is rabbi at Congregation Mishkon Tefilah in addition to being a teacher at PHDS.

Since a yeshiva is considered a valuable community resource, some religious Jews will choose to move to a city like Providence that has one, over, say, Boston, which does not. The New England Rabbinical College significantly influenced Daniel Straus and his wife to choose Providence as the place to finish their post-graduate studies.

‘Rosh yeshiva’

“Yeshivas can completely transform a community,” said Rabbi Eliezer Gibber, the school’s dean, who helped found the yeshiva in 1984.

From a distance Rabbi Gibber may seem an imposing figure — he has a long grey beard, and wears a black suit and a serious expression. Get closer, though, and you might get one of his famous mighty handshakes. You’ll also quickly notice the kindness, humility, and brilliance for which he is famous.

When Rabbi Gibber enters a room to teach his class, conversation stops. Students and adults, as a one body, rise in respect until their teacher is seated. The respect is genuine; it would be unfathomable for a student to act up in his presence.

Rabbi Gibber, as rosh yeshiva (head of the yeshiva), is considered by many to be the chief rabbinical authority in Rhode Island, and he and his staff receive calls at all hours on a variety of issues, as well as  paying hospital visits and shiva calls.

“I don’t think I’ve ever called him with a question and not had him get back to me,” says Cheryl Gottesman. “I don’t think he sleeps.”

Originally from Monticello, N.Y., and the grandson of a rabbi, Rabbi Gibber studied in Philadelphia and taught at Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore. In the 1980s, PHDS had a thriving boys and girls high school and starting a yeshiva seemed like the next step. Rabbi Sholom Strajcher, then dean at PHDS, brought Gibber in and the yeshiva was established with a class of five students.

Rabbi Gibber was instrumental in bringing a group of outreach professionals to Providence – first, Rabbi Aaron Lapin, of Project Shoresh. He also created a firm relationship with the large Orthodox community in Baltimore, from which the Rhode Island yeshiva has gained more than 40 alumni.

“Gibber is the real McCoy.  Rabbis like him come from a long tradition,” said Thomas Pearlman, a strong supporter of the Yeshiva and Orthodox Jewish causes.

“People wonder why Judaism has survived all these generations. It’s just like the Patriots — you need to practice two or three hours a day to have a winning team. You don’t succeed in Judaism by putting in an hour a week.”

Rabbi Gibber said that Orthodox communities without one often find themselves fading away after two or three generations.

(To be continued in next issue.)