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Rav Raz Hartman, born to Israeli parents, grew up in Southern California. He was attending U.S.C., majoring in Music Peformance, when he met Rav Natan Greenberg. That meeting eventually result in Raz's coming to the Bat Ayin Yeshiva, where he studied for six years and was given Semichah in 2003. He is married to Leah, and they live, with their three children, in Nachla'ot, Jerusalem, where Raz serves as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Simchah Shlomo, and founder of the v'Ani Tefillah minyan. He has also produced several albums of Jewish music. Raz has recently returned to Bat Ayin as a teacher, teaching Breslov Chassidut. |
Alumni
Students come to Bat Ayin from many different places, and leave on just as many paths. Our Alumni are rabbis, lawyers, musicians, teachers, psychologists, technologists, and farmers. Each one is working to carve out his own unique path in the world. Below are profiles of just a few of our Alumni.
Rav Raz Hartman
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Gavriel is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-living Women's Yeshiva at the time. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life. Gavriel writes: My capacity to survive and thrive in Boulder is a direct result of my education at Bat Ayin. It requires a capacity to see the legitimacy of people's spiritual lives no matter where it has taken them, as opposed to a mere judgment. People are real, and Torah is real, and real people need real Torah, and Bat Ayin has real Torah. I would like to encourage all of the musmachim to remember everything they have learned - not just from one teacher or another, but everything, for there are all kinds of people in the world. |
Rav Ariel Burger
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Rav Ariel Burger received his ordination from Yeshivat Bat Ayin in 2003. He is currently completing his doctoral work in Theology, Jewish Thought and Social Ethics at Boston University. He serves as Teaching Fellow for Professor Elie Wiesel. He received semichah at the Bat Ayin Yeshiva in Israel and teaches Bible, Rabbinic Literature and Hasidic Thought at Harvard Hillel and at the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, where he integrates traditional learning and creative expression into his curricula. He is also a visual artist and a songwriter. Ariel writes: My whole life is about integrating deep rootedness in Torah with creativity. I searched for a yeshiva that would allow me to bring those elements together, and I found it in Bat Ayin, along with a unique, dynamic, diverse hevre. Working on the levels of personal avodat Hashem, intellectual inquiry, emotional authenticity and creativity in learning and other media is a prerequisite for my own wholeness, and I believe strongly that this type of "parallel processing" will provide a great healing for a fractured Am Yisrael. Rav Kook bemoaned the separation of Halacha and Aggada, and Bat Ayin is one of the rare yeshivot that is truly connected to both, so that it is a powerful resource for the Orthodox community, the larger Jewish community, and even beyond. My experience there has given me the breadth and depth of learning to be a resource for others; a framework for radical openness in dealing with very different people; and a set of personal practices to keep it real b'ezrat Hashem. |
Mordechai Cohen
After three years at the Bat Ayin Yeshiva, Mordechai studied at Hebrew University's Melton center for Jewish Education and completed the Pardes Institute Educators' Program. He served as Director of Jewish Studies at New Community Jewish High School in Los Angeles for three years before returning to Israel. Mordechai is now working in education in the development town of Lod. He and his wife LIat live in Lod with their three children, Galia Chana, Yael Ita, and Avinoam Tuvia.
Mordechai writes: At Bat Ayin I internalized the message that my professional life needed to be directly involved with teaching, learning, and being an active member of Klal Yisrael. At Bat Ayin I studied and had the zechut to adopt a compelling and powerful Judaism that holistically embraces, modernity, goodness, Israel, Zionism , spirituality, learning, teaching, tikun olam, tefilah and everything else that's good! Whether it be mentoring students or taking with parents, or relations with faculty, every day I draw on the teachings and my learning and the power of my Bat Ayin experiences - that's of course true in my personal life as well. Despite the distance, I feel a special kinship with my rabayim. I often encounter an issue and to this day I find myself wondering how each of my Rabayim would have responded. Many times I think I know the answer, yet I am convinced they would be happy and proud that I formulated a view of my own, even if radically different from theirs. This, to my mind, is a testament to the strength of the Rebbe-Talmud relationships forged at Bat Ayin - relationships based not on dependence, but on mutual respect, genuine affinity and deep reflection.
Rav David Jaffe
Rav David Jaffe teaches Talmud at the Gann Academy in Boston Massachusetts. He has also been teaching adults in the Boston area, teaching basic Jewish skills for new Jewish parents, and developing a course of middot development based on Rav Shlomo Woble's Alei Shor. David lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Janette and thier two sons. He was a student at Bat Ayin for two years.
David writes: I am grateful to the Yeshiva and the Rebbeim for so many things. Learning how to teach from the heart. Staying committed to my own personal Avodah as the key to being authentic as a teacher. Connecting the head and the heart, Torah and Tefilla. And, of course, a connection to Rebbe Nachman. Just the other day I brought my 10th grade Iyun Gemara class out to the woods behind the school. We just finished a sugia. I told them about Torah and Tefilla and the importance of integrating Torah into our whole being - mind, hearts, body. Based on what my gemara rav at Bat Ayin did with us, I asked them all to go out into the woods and think of a part of the sugia or anything they learned in Torah this year and speak or think about how it relates to their life now. When we got back together a few of the students shared some really profound connections. B"H. This is something I got directly from the Yeshiva.
Rav Leibush Hundert
Since 2004, Rav Leibush Hundert had been the Rabbi if the 'Ghetto Shul' in Montreal, Canada. The 'Ghetto Shul' is a popular grass roots center for students and young professional, making waves on campus at McGill University. He is an accomplished saxophone player, a known personality in the burgeoning online Jewish community, and a doctoral candidate in Chassidut. He was a student at Yeshivat Bat Ayin for four years. He lives in Montreal with his wife, Dina.
Leibush writes: I couldn’t have done this without Bat Ayin. It’s such a deep thing. On one hand, it’s just the basics of having learned Torah for three years. But, it’s also the conversations with people, applying what we learn to real life, and confronting for real what it means to pray, and what it means to serve Hashem. It wasn’t so much coming up with answers, but opening up a variety of struggles and possibilities. My time at Bat Ayin taught me to look deeply into the teachings of the full range of Torah and discover their amazing relevance on the most intimate personal level.