Rav Gavriel Goldfeder

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.