Torah learning and a career? Yeshiva students can have it all

Stuart Hershkowitz – JCT, 26/08/18 11:00

How can young adult yeshiva students spend long hours learning Torah, but also pursue a professional career at the same time? This was the seemingly unanswerable question facing Ari Schiff, a native of Staten Island, N.Y., during his second year at Yeshivat HaKotel in Jerusalem.

Fast-forward to the present, and Ari, a soon-to-be college graduate equipped with a degree in business administration, is set to begin a full-time position at the Avalon Capital merger and acquisition firm in Tel Aviv.

How did Ari solve the conundrum of the Torah-academic balance? He is one of the hundreds of students whose lives and futures have been transformed by the International Program in English at the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT). Leveraging JCT’s know-how as a pioneer in providing high-quality academics to religious Israeli and Diaspora Jews alike, the international program allows students to continue learning with their rabbis in yeshiva, while also giving them the opportunity to obtain a prestigious academic degree in either business or computers and strong professional training in the field.

The international program’s business curriculum combines studies in management and marketing with a background in technology, incorporating lectures and practical research projects that challenge the students to apply their knowledge to real-life situations. Courses are offered in principles of management, marketing management, introduction to micro-economics, introduction to macro-economics, principles of finance, financial accounting, managerial accounting, business ethics, and mathematics for business. When he graduates next month, Ari will join the hundreds of JCT alumni who have attained leading positions in the business and high-tech sectors, both in Israel and abroad.

Perhaps most importantly, Ari did not need to sacrifice on his Torah studies in order to launch his career. By condensing courses to Tuesdays and Fridays, the international program gave him the flexibility in his schedule to complete two sedarim (study sessions) daily in yeshiva.

Ari is particularly grateful for his JCT professors, who went the extra mile to help him forge the indispensable connections that led to employment. During Ari’s first year at JCT, a start-up founder who the college invited as a guest speaker offered him an internship. The same process happened in Ari’s second year leading to other summer internship in the field.

This is a typical outcome at JCT, where faculty members personally invest in their students through gestures such as frequently inviting potential employers to campus. Anyone who has applied for their first job (or to any job, for that matter) knows that merely completing an online application—even accompanied by a well-written cover letter—is rarely enough to land the position.

Ari Schiff is hardly alone. JCT international student Benny Sabghir of Brooklyn began working as head of content at DataCrushers, a start-up in Jerusalem that helps e-commerce merchants recover lost revenue, before he even graduated. Dovid Samuels of Memphis, who hopes to serve as a computer programmer in the IDF and then pursue a career in artificial intelligence, says there is “not a single college that is on par with JCT on a religious level while still maintaining a competitive educational level.”

“I just felt like I was lacking in certain areas and felt it was critical to get back to my Jewish identity while taking the next step in life. I was 24—I needed to start my degree,” says Saul Rothman of Los Angeles, recalling the crossroads he faced upon completing his IDF service. “At JCT, I could still learn Torah while also study computer science, which was exactly what I wanted to study.”

Saul’s point about Jewish identity—and personal identity in general—is a crucial one. Too many yeshiva students believe that in order to pursue higher education and ultimately, a professional career, they need to compromise on part of their identity as committed Torah learners. Through JCT’s international program, that does not need to be the case. Jewish young adults who seek thriving futures both in the Torah world and in the workforce can, indeed, have it all.

Stuart Hershkowitz is Vice President of the Jerusalem College of Technology.

Source: Israel National News