The religious and spiritual identity of Modern Orthodox adolescents and young adults in our community are shaped by their experiences in various educational, familial and communal structures. These primarily include six specific settings (in no specific order):
- home and family life
- peer group
- shul and community experiences
- elementary and yeshiva high school experience
- summer camp or program experience
- post high school gap year/s in Israel
This year, through a confluence of coincidence, there are three major and significant Modern Orthodox institutions, representing the last three environments in the list above, that are each celebrating their 50th yovel anniversary year. I refer here to the SAR Academy and High School in Riverdale, New York, Camp Stone in Sugar Grove, Pennsylvania, and Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, Gush Etzion.
As we enter the holiday of Chanukah, one of the central themes of the holiday is the sense of hallel and hodaah, thanksgiving, a deep sense of gratitude to God for the chesed He has been bestowed upon us. In thinking about the 50th anniversary year of these three remarkable institutions, I am personally filled with hakarat hatov, of gratitude, for their existence and the role they have played in my life, career and the life of my family. It has been my particular privilege and blessing to be associated with all three institutions for significant periods of time in my life. This short essay gives me the opportunity to publicly voice some of that gratitude and highlight this special confluence of each of these important institutions in our community reaching this significant milestone in their history.
I have been associated with Yeshivat Har Etzion, one of the pioneering and leading yeshivot hesder in Israel, for more than 36 years. This amounts to almost three quarters of the years of the existence of the yeshiva, which opened its beit midrash in a small quonset hut in Kfar Etzion with a handful of students in Chanukah 5679, December 1968.
I first arrived at Yeshivat Har Etzion in the fall of 1981 as a young 18-year-old student and had the privilege of imbibing Torah and wisdom at the feet of my revered teachers, Rabbi Yehudah Amital and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, both of blessed memory, and the other faculty members and the special group of Israeli and foreign-born students who filled the halls of that pulsating beit midrash. It was my good fortune to be able to continue that relationship with mentors and peers as an alumnus, ultimately serving on the board of the yeshiva for more than two decades, and now having the special experience of my own son learning at the yeshiva this year. This special institution has been a lodestar for our community in producing learned, engaged young men, and, for the past two decades, young women as well through Migdal Oz. These are young men and women who the yeshiva has helped cultivate and nurture in every aspect of their religious, emotional and intellectual lives. They emerge out of the halls of the beit midrash passionate about talmud Torah, deeply committed to Torah observance, committed to the State of Israel and klal Yisrael, while open to the best of Western culture and knowledge and proud members of the Modern Orthodox community. And a hallmark of the yeshiva since its founding has been encouraging many of its best and brightest to go into the field of Jewish education and the rabbinate, to the great benefit of our community here, in Israel and throughout the world.
For more than 20 years I have also been privileged to spend two to five weeks at Camp Stone with my family as a scholar-in-residence and educator. This institution is an amazing religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox summer camp that has set the standard in informal and experiential Jewish education. Through its programming and activities, generations of children have grown in their Judaism and attachment to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. It is in those magical weeks in the wilds of Pennsylvania of a small camp funded initially by Mr. Irving Stone, that opened its doors in the summer of 1969, that so many youngsters have been turned on to Yiddishkeit in a fun and engaging manner. Together with those experiences they have been enriched with a deep sense of Jewish history and destiny that has shaped them into the committed young Jewish adults and leaders that so many have gone on to become.
And for the past decade, after having taught in many of the fine yeshiva high schools in our tristate area, I have had the pleasure and privilege of teaching at the SAR High School, which opened its doors in 2000 and grew out of the SAR Academy that began in 1969 as well. This large and growing yeshiva day and high school has been at the cutting edge of educational practice and development of an open, loving yet rigorous educational model that can engage both the heart and minds of our kids and help guide them become committed, intelligent and passionate Modern Orthodox adults. Here, too, I am blessed this year to have one of my sons learning at the high school as well. In addition to its general mission, in recent years this educational institution has taken upon itself to be a leader in wrestling with some of the major challenges that we as a Modern Orthodox community face and are likely to face as the world around us and its mores change at a rapid pace.
All three of these unique institutions have played a central role in shaping the lives of so many of our children and young adults as well as the very nature and texture of our Modern Orthodox community here in the United States and especially here in our own New Jersey and New York communities. All three share a passionate commitment for what they do and are unabashedly lechatchila in their embrace of Modern Orthodoxy and religious Zionism at its best. By luck, or is it the hand of Providence, they all are in the midst of celebrating 50 years in existence. As the year progresses and the celebratory events are marked, we can collectively wish them continued success and growth as we head into the next half century.
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot
Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot is rabbi of Cong. Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, NJ, and chair of the Torah She’b’al Peh dept. at the SAR High School in Riverdale.
