Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary
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Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary or RIETS (Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan) is the most important yeshiva component of Yeshiva University. It is a preeminent Yeshiva (rabbinical seminary) for the training of the Orthodox rabbinate. It is named after Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, who died the year it was founded.
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[edit] Program
A structured four year program, the RIETS curriculum is primarily focused on instruction in advanced Talmudic and Halachic methodology. Additionally, there are a variety of required courses intended to train students for careers as practicing rabbis. These additional courses, in fields such as homiletics and pastoral counseling, are ordered into three tracks, geared to those who will pursue careers as congregational rabbis, chaplains, and teachers. In reality, many RIETS students enter the program without ever intending to graduate, and of those who do receive semicha ("ordination") few actually serve as congregational rabbis.
Supplementing their yeshiva studies, many RIETS students are concurrently enrolled in a variety of other graduate degree granting programs, including those in law, education, academic Jewish studies, psychology, and the sciences.
The Philip and Sarah Belz School of Jewish Music is an affiliate of RIETS.
[edit] History
Historically, the head of Yeshiva University served in a dual capacity as both President of Yeshiva University as an academic institution and also as the rosh yeshiva ("dean") of RIETS. RIETS and Yeshiva University were a single entity for most of the first half of the twentieth century. However, their second president, Rabbi Samuel Belkin legally separated the two institutions in order to obtain United States government funding and research grants for a variety of YU's secular departments. In Rabbi Belkin's view, the modern understanding of the separation of church and state in the United States would have otherwise forced YU to either forgo federal grants (a major source of funding for all universities) and stagnate, or alternatively to unacceptably alter the religious character of RIETS. The move was strongly opposed by RIETS's leading scholar Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik who saw the split as the antithesis of Torah Umadda (the "synthesis btween Torah and Science"), Yeshiva University's guiding philosophy.
As Rabbi Samuel Belkin was president of the university while Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik was merely an extremely respected faculty member, Rabbi Belkin prevailed. Following the split, he remained both the official rosh yeshiva of RIETS and president of Yeshiva University.
Earlier, it was Rabbi Bernard Revel who was the official rosh yeshiva and university president even though many other great Talmudic scholars taught at RIETS, notably Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, who served as co-head of RIETS. With the recent appointment of Richard M. Joel, a layman, as president of Yeshiva University, his predecessor Rabbi Norman Lamm has continued on as the official rosh yeshiva of RIETS, with Richard Joel being the "Chief Executive", basically responsible for fund-raising and administrative issues.
[edit] Faculty
Over the course of its long history many universally acknowledged great rabbis have taught at RIETS. Scions of the Brisker dynasty, Rabbis Moshe Soloveitchik and Joseph Dov Soloveitchik spent the majority of their active lives at RIETS, and Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik lectured there for significant portions of his career. In earlier generations, Rabbi Shimon Shkop taught at RIETS for a short period around 1930, as did the Meischeter Illui Rabbi Shlomo Polachek, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Zaks (son in law of the Hafetz Hayyim), the great baal mussar Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Lessin, and Rabbi Nisson Alpert, Rav Dovid Lifschitz, to name just a few. Current world renowned Roshei Yeshiva include Rabbis Hershel Schachter, Mordechai Willig, Michael Rozensweig, and Mayer Twersky among others. The Yeshiva is also privileged to be blessed with two direct links to halakhic authority Rabbi Moshe Feinstein: his son-in-law, Rabbi Moshe David Tendler, and his jurisprudentially ordained ("yadin yadin") disciple, Rabbi J. David Bleich.
[edit] Current Enterprise
For the semester of autumn 2006, the RIETS Yeshiva is studying the seventh chapter of Tractate Bava Kamma, known as "Perek Merubah". The chapter derives its name from the chapter's first word "Merubah" (lit. "it is superior"), referring to the fact that the double punishment (known as "Kefel") that a thief must pay according to Torah law is qualitatively superior to the four-and-five-times punishment that one who steals and slaughters and/or sells an ox or a sheep must pay. This superiority arises on account of the rule that a thief of any movable possession is subject to the double repayment, whereas the four-or-five-times repayment is only triggered in the context of an ox or a sheep.
