Mesivta Tiferes Yisroel is a yeshiva in Brooklyn. It was founded in the Fall of 1988 by Rabbi David Harris (?1947- ). Originally intended as an affiliate of the slightly right-of-center Rabbinical Seminary of America (RSA), it has evolved under the leadership of Rabbi Tzvi Turk (?1951- ) into a more mainline right-wing institution. Though it continues to retain strong ties with RSA, it is widely seen as a non-conforming affiliate. It currently has about 115 students on the high school level and 20 at the undergraduate (Beit Midrash) level. Many of the latter will continue on a rigidly determined ciriculumn, eventually seeking rabbinical ordination in RSA.

Table of contents
1 Founding
2 Schooling
3 Metamorphosis
4 Student Body
5 Israel
6 College

Founding

Rabbi David Harris had already had a long and distinguished career as an educator in the RSA system (he founded the Talmudic Institute of Upstate New York, its Rochester affiliate and, later, was a teacher in its flagship high school, RSA HS) when the order came from Rabbi Alter Chanoch Henoch Leibowitz to set up an affiliated school in the ultra-Orthodox stronghold of Brooklyn. This move represented a major break from the typical RSA modus operandi, which tends to concentrate on areas not containing a strong Orthodox educational system. The ranks of RSA, like Rabbis Harris and Turk, has traditionally been filled by Jewish youngsters coming from more assimilated Orthodox communities (Harris is from Scranton, Pennsylvania, Turk from West Orange, NJ) and would likely have had lay careers if not for the influence of RSA. However, Brooklyn represented a bastion of more traditional institutions such as Chaim Berlin and Torah V'Daas, and as such, meant that for the first time, RSA would have to compete for a more committed student population and present its ideology as a coherent and compelling alternative to the more classical yeshivishe ideologies.

The school opened up in the basement of the Young Israel of Ave. K synagogue with one ninth grade class and two elementary school classes, with about 60 students in all. Adding a class each year to both the high school and primary school, MTY (its elementary school is known as Yeshiva Tiferes Yisroel or YTY) soon outgrew its cramped quarters and moved into a new building in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn in the Fall of 1991. MTY has bought property in the surrounding area and added a major wing in Fall 1998. By that time, the elementary school had exceeded 400 children, the high school had about 100 students, and its newly added Beit Midrash program, although fluctuating from year to year, attracted a dozen or two students.

Schooling

The Orthodox population of the Flatbush section of Brooklyn is paradoxical in many ways. David Berger, a Modern Orthodox scholar and professor of history at CUNY and Yeshiva University, once proposed naming the denomination representing the clientele of the local yeshivas as "Proud of their secular education but opposed to it" Orthodoxy. There is a very large segment of the population that is highly educated and/or successful in their careers. However, many, for various reasons, mostly having to do with perceived spiritual defiencies and presence of bad influences, shun the local Modern Orthodox high schools, such as Yeshiva of Flatbush, Yeshiva University High School for Boys (MSTA/MTA), and the Rambam Mesivta. It was precisely this population that MTY was most successful in recruiting.

MTY soon gained a reputation as having "good secular studies," primarily because of their attitude, in the words of Rabbi (?Turk/Harris), "Once you're spending time on it, you may as well learn something." Many parents who would have otherwise sent their children to Torah Temimah or Chaim Berlin were attracted by this compromise because of their general positive view of secular learning- and MTY, prima facie , offered a very strong religious environment. MTY gained a strong niche in the community as a school that was dedicated to full-time study of Torah while simultaneously adopting its parent institution's tolerance for Americanization to a degree greater than typical of mainline yeshivas. In its relatively short existence, MTY has seen pass through its doors young men who appear to be on the fast track to great accomplishment in the world of yeshiva studies, the sphere of career accomplishment, and, on rare occasions, the academic world, though the administration makes it abundantly clear that the latter two (especially the last one) are inferior to the first. The attitude towards those that do not commit to the rabbinate, or at least an extensive post high school course of study dedicated exclusively to Torah study, has been in flux since the administration change of '97-'98.

A typical day for a student in MTY is as follows: Morning prayers begin at 7:40 AM with a strict check of attendance. The penalty for tardiness was detention during the tenure of Rabbi Eliyahu Maza as assistant principal (199?-1999). When Rabbi Sender Strassfeld assumed Maza's position in the Fall of 1999, he revamped this policy and instead instituted a monetary penalty escalating in scale with the severity and frequency of offenses. Prayers usually conclude around 8:30 AM and are followed by breakfast until 9 AM. At this time, the students have different schedules based on their grade level, but the general schedule (with the exception of senior year) is about an hour of Jewish Law and Ethics (usually an intensive study of a 19th century text such as Rabbi Moshe Chayyim Luzzatto's "Path of the Just", followed by about 2.5 hours of Talmud. Lunch is for about an hour, and one will commonly find students playing with great gusto, energy, and, on not-such-rare occasions, acerbity on the basketball courts. The students spend about another 1.5 hours on a second round of Talmud (now more breadth oriented than depth oriented) and finish up the standard Jewish curriculum with about 45 minutes of Biblical commentaries (concentrating on 11th-13th century commentators). It is 2:45 and the entire school now joins for the afternoon prayers.

Immediately after the last utterance of this Mincha service, students from grades 9-11 must rush up to their respective classrooms if they do not wish to be late for their first class. A day of classes is made up of five 40 minute periods with two minute breaks in between each class. Students take the courseload mandated by New York State for its Regents diploma, and students take a total of ten Regents' examinations during their four year study. Especially in the first two years, there can be some very demanding combinations of teachers and courses. By 11th grade, the schedule begins to slacken off, with computers/gym taking one period and many students having already completed their math requirement (although in a reversal of longstanding school policy, MTY recently began to offer AP Calculus to 10th graders). After classes finish at 6:30 PM (3.5 hours a day of secular studies, as compared to a public school's six and a Modern Orthodox day school like MSTA's 4.5), students stay as late as 9PM from two to four times a week for a supplemental Talmud study session. On Sunday, there is a regular schedule until 3PM (the day ends after afternoon prayers).

One of the defining characteristics of the MTY approach to education is its 12th grade program, where clearly captures its priorities and sympathies vis-a-vis secular education. Students are actively encouraged to forswear all classes to maintain a full day schedule in the study hall (by this stage, classroom instruction had dwindled to a daily hour-long Talmud lecture), from 7:40 AM to 10PM Monday through Thursday, and until 6 PM on Sundays. Students who opt out take 80 minutes of secular classes a day, and must stay in the study hall until 9 PM nightly. The roots of MTY and RSA, the Eastern European yeshiva tradition, particularly Rabbi Nota Zvi Finkel's Slobodka, are first openly on display during this intensive year.

One of the factors that has been cited by many MTY graduates as what makes this institution unique is the close ties the administration and higher-ranked Jewish Studies faculty have with the students (as opposed to the secular studies faculty, who are discouraged from forming bonds with students, and the adjunct Jewish Studies faculty, who, teaching disciplines less in vogue than Talmud, didn't really have enough time or "pull" to form relationships). Students have cited the willingness of some of MTY's senior rabbis (such as Rabbis Harris, Turk, and Yehuda Jacobson, dean of MTY's primary school satellite) to learn personally with individual students. Although such a relationship is usually limited to the brightest and most motivated students, the general perception that rabbis "know your name and a good deal more than that" has proven attractive to many potential students. Class sizes are relatively small (20-25), and RSA in general encourages a more interactive style of learning, often leading to many close relationships between students and Rebbeim (as students call their Jewish Studies teachers- all of whom are male and ordained rabbis- most within the RSA system).

Metamorphosis

Much of the goings-on in MTY must be seen in the light that it is part of the large and organic RSA system, and must respond to changes within the larger organism. RSA is headed by Rabbi Henoch Leibowitz, and has he had advanced in age, the manifestations of his gradually encroaching retirement have cause major ripples throughout his entire educational empire. The most drastic effect this had on MTY was when, in April 1997, Rabbi David Harris announced that he had been summoned to RSA's flagship campus in Forest Hills, Queens (the institution has since moved to Kew Garden Hills Queens) to ease Rabbi Leibowitz's teaching and lecturing burden. Implicit, but left unsaid, was the clear indication that Harris was being anointed as Leibowitz's successor.

In Progress.....

Student Body

Traditionally, students who attended MTY came from a variety of backgrounds. A typical MTY class consisted of students primarily from Yeshiva Torah Temima and Kaminetz, and the latter, also known as Toras Emes, attracted a more mixed population (with regard to adherence to the norms of Yeshivishe Orthodox) . Recently, the number of Kaminetz students has dwindled. Instead, MTY now recruits mostly Yeshiva Tiferes Yisroel (YTY) students and Yeshiva Torah Temima students.

In Progress.....

Israel

In recent years, it has become customary for graduating students of Orthodox Jewish Yeshivas to spend a year in Israel at a post high school Yeshiva institution. Until 2000, many MTY graduates spent that year in Chofetz Chaim in Jerusalem, Israel. Chofetz Chaim in Jerusalem (CCJ) is yet another branch of RSA. It has traditionally attracted Chofetz Chaim students from all across North America. Its emphasis on Mussar resembles RSAs, and as such, the students adjust very readily and smoothly. In the course of the major reorganization of the global RSA structure over the past half-decade, in 2000, a popular rabbi, Binyomin Luban, was transfered from CCJ to the RSA affiliate located in Miami, Florida. This transfer, which took place on the order of Rabbi Leibowitz, would lead to a many students from RSA affiliates heading to destinations other than Israel for their post high school year.

In Progress.....

College

MTYs policy about colleges is that they must be avoided at almost all costs. They are establishments that are hazardous to ones soul. Despite this, a few students have gone on to receive degrees at various colleges and universities. Some have even pursued advanced degrees. According to one estimation there are currently 20 graduates in college and graduate school, with the majority of them attending Touro College in Brooklyn, NY or Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, NY.

In Progress.....