Draws Less Affiliated Students to Torah Education and Observance
This year at Yeshivat Frisch’s 2016 commencement, two graduates, Shmuel Antonov and Ariel Froimchuk, earned recognition for their excellence in Jewish Studies. Ariel was one of three students to receive the Rabbi Isaac Swift Talmud Award for his achievements in Talmud, and Shmuel was one of four students to win the Frisch School Torah Studies Faculty Award for his demonstrated commitment to Torah study. Winning awards is always impressive, but the truly remarkable aspect of these particular awards is that before their freshman year of high school, neither Ariel nor Shmuel had experienced a Torah education.
Since its founding in the 1970s, one of Frisch’s critical values has been to welcome graduates of public school who desire a Jewish education and observance on a higher level than to which they have previously been exposed. These students are part of Frisch’s Mechina Program, which gives first-year yeshiva students a year-long crash course in Hebrew language; Jewish texts such as Chumash, Nevi’im Rishonim and Gemara; and Jewish philosophy taught by various Frisch educators, before they are integrated into mainstream Jewish Studies classes. Many of the program’s graduates go on to be shomer mitzvot. Frisch is one of the only yeshiva high schools in the U.S. to offer such a program. Frisch offers the Shay Scholars Program, which distributes scholarship assistance to ensure that cost does not deter a determined young man or woman who seeks a Jewish education.
“I was recently out and about in Teaneck and met a 1993 Frisch graduate who immediately asked me if the Mechina Program still existed at Frisch,” related Rabbi Jonathan Schachter ’94, Rosh Beit Midrash, who has taught the Mechina students for the past five years. “He told me it was the only reason he was still connected to observant Judaism.”
Rabbi Schachter wasn’t surprised to hear it. “I believe many Mechina graduates are frum and connected Jewishly today because of this program. Because of the smaller class size, and because the students are old enough to have real questions, there are very often serious, intellectual conversations being had about fundamental issues of Judaism. These discussions tend to spark genuine commitment to the principles being taught and inspire deeper dedication to Judaism …. The ideas are new for the students …. They want to discuss them further and examine them before they are ready to embrace them. Their thirst for truth is something that all students, as well as the teachers, can learn from.”
As Rachel Spiro, a recent Frisch graduate who spent her first year at Frisch in Mechina, put it, “Before I started Frisch, I felt like a square peg in a round hole. Public school was not fit for a girl who was starting to live as an observant Jew, and I was isolated. What I received from my Frisch education is so much more than book knowledge—my core has changed. On day one, I was embraced by my fellow students and teachers simply because I am part of Am Yisrael. Frisch is a microcosm of the Jewish world at its best. Teachers are not just my teachers, but in some ways, a second family. We pray together, eat together, go on trips together, and celebrate smachot together. I never experienced anything like that before. I finally had a community.”
