TORONTO — After more than two years of groundwork, the Canadian Yeshiva & Rabbinical School – expected to open in 2012 – held a “celebration of progress” last week at Adath Israel Congregation.
Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum
Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum, the school’s rosh yeshiva and the driving force behind its creation, said that Judaism is “being pulled apart at the seams,” referring to a move to the right in the Orthodox world and a move to the left in Conservative Judaism. His school is designed to bring bring the factions back together.
A former rabbi at Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation, which left the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism two years ago, Rabbi Tanenbaum has retired from the synagogue. Faculty members for his new endeavour are from both Conservative and Orthodox backgrounds.
In March, Rabbi Daniel Sperber, a professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University and president of its Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, came on board as chancellor of the Canadian Yeshiva. Rabbi Sperber, a 1992 recipient of Israel’s prestigious Israel Prize for his scholarship, will continue to be based in Israel.
At the event last week, former British prime minister Tony Blair, speaking by video, expressed his support for the yeshiva and said he looked forward to working with it in the future. Blair now runs a foundation he established to promote understanding about major religions.
Retired senator Jerry Grafstein, the yeshiva’s honorary chair, commended Rabbi Tanenbaum’s spirit and persistence, and said that the yeshiva is important not only to the university, but to the academic community in general, as well as to the Jewish community and Canada.
“There isn’t language for us,” said Rabbi Tanenbaum in an interview. “We’re not calling ourselves Orthodox. We’re not calling ourselves Conservative. We’re building a halachic institution.”
Rabbi Sperber, speaking at the event, said he was persuaded to join the yeshiva largely because he has been disturbed by trends in the Israeli, American and European Orthodox rabbinates to move toward positions of stringency that have led to “the disenchantment of great parts of our Jewish community away from centrist Judaism.
“To create a new profile of rabbi who can present Judaism, Torah and Halachah in a welcoming fashion… who is willing to dialogue with anyone and everyone, to accept differences and to appreciate the legitimacy of views other than their own without compromising their own ideology, this I think is an enormous challenge, one which will require very careful navigation.
However, he added, if the goal is achieved, it “will have enormous benefits [including] much wider implications, because it may form a model that can be replicated elsewhere.”
As well, it will justify his participation in it, a stand he noted he has been “very severely criticized for.”
Rabbi Sperber told The CJN in an interview two days before the event that he believes an institution that is “truly centrist… and truly halachic” will bring people together.
Although Rabbi Sperber would have preferred the term “Orthodox,” he feels the initiative is important in bridging a gap between the streams of Judaism, and should be encouraged, he said in the interview.
It’s very important to him that the new yeshiva been seen as a halachic institution, he added. “Certainly the curriculum, the teaching of basic subjects, the final examinations of the students, and their own religious practices would have to be normative halachic, traditional halachic.”
He also said that to create Canadian rabbis here, instead of having to “import” them, is an important move.
In addition to a four-year rabbinic smichah program, the school is applying for degree-granting status for programs including pastoral counselling.
Rabbi Tanenbaum said that he was approached by the Toronto School of Theology – a federation of seven Christian theological schools – because of his interfaith work. He was asked to consider having the yeshivah become the eighth institution at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College.
Being housed among Christian seminaries has many positive potential implications for greater understanding between Christians and Jews, said Rabbi Sperber, who has also been involved in interfaith work for many years.
Other key features of the yeshivah will include a residence hall in a yet-to-be-determined location – to serve as a halachic living environment, a program for spouses, and scholarships and living stipends – ideally – for all students.
“We’re working on the funding,” said Randall Starr, chair of the yeshiva’s board of governors. Operating costs for the first four years are expected to be in the order of $7 million.
