Team to head new initiatives at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah
Bergenfield—This summer, the Bergen County community bids farewell to two beloved young rabbis. Rabbi Ely Allen, director of Hillel of Northern New Jersey for the past 14 years, who has been an instructor at Yeshiva University for the past seven years and at the Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies for more than 20 years, is making the momentous move from Bergenfield to Ramat Beit Shemesh with his wife and four children.
Rabbi Mordechai Gershon, with his wife and three children, decamps from his post as Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, where he has served for the past five years as director of the shul’s Benaroya Sephardic Center. Rabbi Gershon started his career at Ahavath Torah as its rabbinic intern after completing semicha at RIETS.
Allen and Gershon will be making aliyah as a team, joining Yeshivat Lev HaTorah as the director and assistant director, respectively, of new initiatives at the yeshiva.
Established only 13 years ago, Yeshivat Lev HaTorah was formed when a team of rabbeim from different yeshivot banded together with a vision of building a yeshiva that stresses the heart, the lev, of Torah. “It’s a place that really stresses being there for the guys, in whatever capacity they need it,” said Allen. The yeshiva boasts an approximately 1:3 teacher-to-student ratio, with all full-time faculty living within walking distance of the school.
“Both at YU and at my other schools, I knew a number of Lev alumni, and they always struck me as, ‘there’s something special about these guys.’ They all have excellent middot. They only accept guys that have a certain refinement of character, guys who have humility, people who know how to treat other people with the proper respect. To me, that is the apex of practicing Judaism,” said Allen.
Rabbis Allen and Gershon told the Jewish Link that while they both separately decided to make aliyah, they discussed with one another the logistics of how to stay involved in meaningful Jewish education projects that would be suited to their skill sets. “We came to the conclusion that we must speak to Rabbi Boaz Mori, the Rosh Yeshiva of Lev HaTorah,” said Rabbi Allen. Rav Mori is a veteran educator, having taught at BMT, Har Etzion, Shaarei Mevasseret Tzion and Machon Gold, before founding Yeshivat Lev HaTorah. He has countless students who have been inspired by his personal warmth and profound scholarship.
Soon after, Rabbi Mori unexpectedly visited Congregation Ahavath Torah, and Rabbis Allen and Gershon were able to begin discussions with him about their ideas. At the same time, Rabbi Mori had been fundraising for a new building, seeking to double the previous building’s size. He was developing several new concepts, but needed the staff to run what would become the yeshiva’s new initiatives. “We hit it off. It was as if we were old friends,” said Rabbi Allen.
So far, the planned new initiatives include a Sephardic track, which will allow Sephardic students the opportunity to hold Sephardic minyanim and shiurei halacha. A new Sephardic shul, crowned by the six round Sephardic Torah scrolls currently housed in the basement shul of Rabbi Allen’s home, will be built at the yeshiva. Allen, an Egyptian Jew with a storied Sephardic family history, brings his library with him in addition to the Torahs, and while Gershon is not culturally Sephardic, he has been providing rabbinic support to Englewood’s Sephardic community for the past five years.
“I feel very strongly about the importance of inter-cultural appreciation, especially because of my role as an Ashkenazic and a Sephardic rabbi in Englewood,” said Gershon. “So it’s a little bit of a dream of mine to create a yeshiva program in which Ashkenazic kids and Sephardic kids can appreciate each other’s backgrounds and cultures and understand where the others are coming from, to have a holistic type of experience…that’s why I’m a stakeholder in these types of programs that we’re, God willing, going to be building,” Gershon said.
As a second initiative, Allen and Gershon will form a Mechina track, designed for public school students seeking an intensive Israel experience that nurtures individual growth and learning. Both rabbis, but particularly Rabbi Allen with his work with Hillel, have intense and lengthy experiences working with both public school students as well as engaging secular, “off-the-derech,” or at-risk individuals.
Rabbi Gershon, who initiated his entire family’s path to Orthodoxy by transferring to the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC) from public school as an early teen, said he feels a special connection to those who might need a mechina Israel experience.
“I feel very, very strongly and I’m very passionate about having proper programming and opportunities for young adults who perhaps went to public school or private school who do not have proper Jewish education and, because of one reason or another, have embraced Judaism and want to leaarn more about Judaism,” said Gershon. He explained that such students can’t go to the classic yeshiva gap-year programs because they just don’t have the background. “Students like that are forced to go to a non-denominational or non-yeshiva program, or they just don’t go to Israel. We could serve a whole population of people that would benefit from this type of year-in-Israel experience but really can’t enjoy that experience at this point,” he said.
Third, the team will develop summer college programs, where students can earn college credits while engaging in high-level Torah study.
Additionally, the two rabbis will also be working to enhance the core yeshiva experience at Lev HaTorah by offering students the opportunity to develop unique skills that will help them thrive on the college campus, keeping students active and engaged in their Jewish communities. Examples of this include teaching students how to be a ba’al koreh, how to provide kashruth supervision, and how to be an NCSY or other youth group advisor. These kinds of roles would allow students to keep a lifelong connection to Judaism when they come home from Israel.
Both rabbis are admittedly ecstatic about the new programming they are to lead at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah. They both consider the positions dream jobs. The three tracks, along with Yeshivat Lev HaTorah’s core program, will provide something for every yeshiva student. “If you’re Sephardic, we have a track for you. If you have a limited background, either because you went to public school or private school, or even if you went to yeshiva day school but just didn’t somehow develop those skills, we have a track for you,” said Rabbi Gershon. “If you’re a typical yeshiva day-school graduate, we have an already great program for you. It really is servicing so many different types of young men.”
Rabbis Allen and Gershon have an overarching goal to revolutionize the gap year experience. “We really want to change the face of the gap year experience and turn it into a lifetime,” explained Rabbi Allen. Both rabbis recognize the divine assistance they have had throughout a relatively stress-free aliyah process. “We take this as a divine sign that we are hopefully embarking on a journey that will help us to accomplish great things for Klal Yisrael,” said Rabbi Gershon.
While we know they will be back to visit, these energetic and inspirational rabbanim will be sorely missed by Bergen County Jewry. To visit them in Israel or learn more about Lev HaTorah, visit http://www.levhatorah.org/.
By Esther Hirsch and Elizabeth Kratz
