Yesivat Birkat Moshe - Maaleh Adumim

The hesder yeshiva, Yeshivat Birkat Moshe was founded in 1977 by Rabbi Haim Sabato together with Rabbi Yitzchak Sheilat in the new settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim in the Judean Desert. Alongside the growth of Ma’leh Adumim, the yeshiva has also grown, to the point that it now hosts about three hundred students among its ranks. Over the course of time, the yeshiva expanded the scope of its activity beyond the traditional five-year Hesder program. Among the additional tracks that have been added are a four year B.Ed. program for teachers (in partnership with Herzog College), rabbinic ordination programs and programs for advanced Torah study. This year, the yeshiva opened a new Kollel for dayanim with the aim of strengthening, advancing and expanding the scope of Torah study in the yeshiva, as well as its spiritual impact upon the Jewish people. The Kollel is designed for an eight-year course of study. The yeshiva has been able to draw talented students – yeshiva-high school graduates and students of traditional yeshivot – from all sectors, due to the fact that its reputation has grown as a center for the development of outstanding talmidei chachamim. There are currently students from forty-three locations in Israel at the yeshiva. The students serve as soldiers and officers in various IDF units, both in active duty as well as in the reserves. There is likewise a group of outstanding foreign students that study in the yeshiva as well. Part of this group stay on in Israel to make aliyah and settle, while the remainder go back to their communities, where they become an important asset for local Jewish and Zionist education. Among our alumni are rabbis and roshei yeshiva equipped to serve as dayanim, as well as accomplished scientists and experts in medicine, physics, law and other fields. Others from our alumni serve as career army officers and as leaders in the settlement movement. The yeshiva also initiated the founding of a yeshiva-high school in Ma’aleh Adumim and continues to share educational programs with it on a frequent basis. Many other alumni have taken on administrative and educational roles in all parts of the educational system in the town. Among the educational staff are rabbis whose accomplishments have had a major impact on Torah culture and research, accompanied in some cases by senior academic work that has drawn wide recognition for their contribution to the fields of Jewish thought and Jewish studies. Alongside the yeshiva, the Ma’aliot Institute was established to publish basic texts in line with the approach of the yeshiva’s rabbis – texts that have given the yeshiva its standing as a research center for Torah and Jewish studies.