More adlults than ever before are learning part-time in yeshivah high schools like the Lubavitch Mesivta in Chicago, above.

After Work, They Put Their Studies to Work

Once a week, Howard Weiss sits down in a cavernous study hall, buzzing with hundreds of teenagers studying ancient Jewish texts, and learns Tanya with Shneur Itzinger, a yeshivah student some 30 years his junior. Weiss is one of many laypeople who study a variety of Torah topics each week at the Lubavitch Mesivta, a yeshivah high school in Chicago.

And why not? For those looking for advanced Torah study, Chabad yeshivahs provide a learning atmosphere, willing study partners and a challenging syllabus.

In fact, after nearly a decade of regular studies, Weiss says, “I would say it is probably the best learning experience I have had. I look forward to coming every week. The Mesivta sets me up with study partners, and I have learned with some of the best. You can tell that they really enjoy what they are learning. In fact, they are so well-prepared, I also read through the text in advance and write down some notes before we meet, so I will have something meaningful of my own to add to the discussion.”

Weiss, a supervisor for U.S. customs and border protection in Chicago, says a highlight of his learning career was when he completed the Talmudic tractate of Chagigah in time to hold a siyum — the traditional celebration for finishing a substantial area of Torah — on the first anniversary of his late mother’s passing, something that would have been unimaginable before he began attending Mesivta.

Dovid Leib Marasow, a former Mesivta student, says people like Weiss give the students a tremendous gift. “Learning with people with advanced education in other areas adds a dimension to the discussion. It is refreshing to learn with someone who can see what we are learning from a different perspective,” he says. “Also, the added preparation means that we know the material better and retain it for longer.”

According to Rabbi Yehuda Leib Schapiro, Rosh Yeshivah (senior lecturer) at the Yeshivah Gedolah of Greater Miami, “the Talmud teaches us that a city without asarah batlanim — 10 people whose sole purpose is to study Torah — is not considered a city. One of the reasons why the Lubavitcher Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson], of righteous memory, encouraged us to open the Yeshivah Gedolah 40 years ago was because he saw that an institution where Torah is studied has the potential to bring an atmosphere of Torah study and Jewish scholarship to the entire city.”

Schapiro notes that a number of laypeople regularly participate in the yeshivah’s rigorous study program. “Besides for the many, many people who passed through our doors to learn, the success spread far beyond our own four walls. The fact that today we have so many other Torah institutions in the Miami area is largely a result of the Yeshivah. People saw that it could be done, and they did the same.”

From the time that the sixth Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, reopened the Tomchei Temimim and Achei Temimim schools in the United States in the 1940s, and continuing under the leadership of the Rebbe, the focus in Chabad-Lubavitch yeshivas was to serve as a bastion of Torah scholarship and Judaism to entire communities. He once remarked, “In other yeshivahs, the students learn and then they leave. By me, they leave to teach.”

The Rebbe taught that studying in a yeshivah for a brief period of time has a significant, lifelong impact, saying that, “anyone who once learned in Tomchei Temimim remains a student of Tomchei Temimim, forever.”

One adult yeshivah student, in particular, began attending after being let go from his accounting job and finding himself with extra time on his hands. By 2007, after seven years of part-time study, his efforts were crowned with success when he received his rabbinical ordination — all while balancing his study time with a new career in real estate.

Of course, not all students are as advanced. In fact, the Pesti Yeshivah in Budapest, Hungary, began holding regular classes in basic Hebrew reading. Yehuda Dukes, who taught Hebrew during his time as a student in the yeshivah, says “this was the only experience of Jewish learning for some students. For others, it was a stepping stone for them to become more involved on other levels as well.”

For some, learning in yeshivah also represents a way of maintaining a previously established learning program. For example, after a year of intensive Torah study at the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, Ryan Solomon, a 24-year-old executive in Montreal, knew that he wanted to continue his studies even as he returned home and devoted the lion’s share of his day to business.

Solomon now spends an hour every day at the Rabbinical College of Canada, where he studies Bava Metzia, a Talmudic tractate that deals with the Jewish laws of business interactions. Since starting there this past fall, Solomon says he has made friends with many of the students and even joins their Shabbat meals, using the opportunity to share his experiences of leaving his previous career as an event promoter to adopt a Chassidic lifestyle.

Berel Gurevitch, a student at the Rabbinical College, says he and his friends find Solomon’s presence an inspiration. “When we see a person come after a full day at the office and devote himself to his studies with such zeal,” says Gurevitch, “we realize how much more we full-timers should do.”

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