| Yeshiva Gedola of Carteret | |
|---|---|
| Established | 2006 |
| Type | Yeshiva (Orthodox) |
| Location | Carteret, NJ, USA |
| Campus | Urban |
Yeshiva Gedola of Carteret (Hebrew: ישיבה תפארת יהודה אריה) informally, "YGOC", also called Yeshiva Tiferes Yehuda Aryeh, is a yeshiva and non-profit organization located in Carteret, New Jersey.
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The yeshiva was founded in 2006 by Rabbis Azriel Brown and Yaakov Mayer, both graduates of Yeshiva of Far Rockaway and Ner Israel Rabbinical College of Baltimore.[1][2] With the backing of Rabbi Aharon Feldman, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, and Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky, among others, Rabbis Brown and Mayer decided to open a yeshiva in the suburban north Jersey town of Carteret, which had had a Jewish community with two synagogues in the 1950s but whose Jewish presence had dwindled to the point that it was no longer able to support the remaining synagogue, a Jewish Community Center, which closed in 2002. A board member of the Jewish Community Center who desired to preserve Jewish life in Carteret arranged to transfer the former synagogue building and an adjoining five-bedroom rabbi's residence to the yeshiva.[2]
The yeshiva opened with 14 students. Initially, Brown's wife Donya and Mayer's wife Chani handled the food preparation and bookkeeping for the fledgling institution, and each family hosted all the students in their home for one Shabbat meal. As yeshiva enrollment grew and the students stayed in the yeshiva full-time, the Browns and Mayers took an active role in each student's education, helped them with shidduchim (marriage proposals), and hosted their sheva brachot (festive meals held during the week after the wedding).[2]
The yeshiva is an all-male Lithuanian (Litvish)-style Talmudic college. Currently, it consists of a beis medrash (undergraduate) program, as well as a kollel (post-graduate) division for its married students. The beis medrash program is divided into two groups: a post-high school constituency which consists of primarily first-, second-, and third-year students (following which it is common for students to spend a year or more of study at yeshivas in Israel), and a senior group which consists mainly of students who have completed their study in Israel and who act as mentors towards younger students. [2]
The kollel is a recent addition and consists entirely of married students who were previously in the beis medrash program. The kollel members live in Carteret, near the yeshiva.[2]
YGOC’s studies are primarily Talmudic texts and rabbinic literature. The yeshiva has a cycle of various tractates it covers over a span of about eight years. Three large chunks of each day (sedarim, or sessions) are applied to the study of Talmud at varying degrees of depth. In addition to Talmudic study, small sections of time each day are allotted for mussar (Jewish ethical literature) and practical Halacha (Jewish law).
The focus of each day is the shiur (main lecture), which takes place at the end of first seder.
In December 2008, the yeshiva celebrated a Hachnasat Sefer Torah, the traditional festivity upon the completion of a new Torah scroll. Several hundred guests came to Carteret for the procession, including several eminent Torah figures. Noe Street was barricaded off to outside traffic as the crowd wound its way to the yeshiva building accompanied by live music and dancing.[1]
In September 2011, the yeshiva held a kesivas osios (Sefer Torah-writing ceremony) in Lakewood for a new Torah scroll, to be dedicated after Sukkot 2011.[3]
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