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Rabbi Chaim Brovender, a name synonymous with higher Torah education in Israel for the past 40 years, is no stranger to educational innovation and creativity. The Brooklyn-born Rabbi Brovender moved to Israel in 1965 and soon after pioneered study programs to open the world of Jewish literacy to English-speaking college students arriving from abroad in the wake of the Six Day War. The “Brovender’s Method”, as it has often been called, combined teaching students the necessary skills they would need to decipher the primary texts and sources of Judaism with a respect for the individuality, personality and background of each student.

So it comes as no surprise to Rabbi Brovender’s students and admirers around the world that he plans on becoming the first ever Internet Rosh Yeshiva. WebYeshiva.org, Rabbi Brovender’s new enterprise, is believed to be a first-of-its-kind online yeshiva.

WebYeshiva will be run under the auspices of ATID, the Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jewish Education, an organization that he co-founded in Jerusalem 10 years ago, whose goal is “to train the future leadership of Jewish education and deal with the crucial issues facing the field.”

One of Brovender’s core beliefs is that growth in Torah study requires human interaction. “I've been teaching Torah in Israel for over 40 years, and if I've learned anything it's that this is the way in which true growth in Torah study comes about -- only through the human interaction," said Brovender recently. This presents someone who wants to promote genuine Torah growth by way of the Internet -- a medium which doesn’t always easily lend itself to creating the experience of a genuine human interaction -- a unique challenge. To overcome these challenges and to create the desired atmosphere, WebYeshiva will use the latest state of the art technology to create the workings of a regular beit midrash atmosphere over the Internet. WebYeshiva will offer live, fully interactive video conference classes. The teacher will be able to see all the students and all the students will be able to see each other as well as the teacher. Various modes of communication between students and the instructor as well as between the students themselves during class time will be employed. According to Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, Director of ATID and one of the founders of WebYeshiva “The program also lets the teacher and student look at whatever texts they are studying together and the teacher can highlight or underline the exact passages under examination."

A hallmark of yeshiva atmosphere is "chavruta" or paired study for preparation and review of the class. Thus, students from around the world will be paired with a chavruta. A Beit Midrash also includes a "meishiv" -- an advanced student or rabbi who is always available to answer questions that arise. Thus, WebYeshiva will have rabbis available 24 hours a day, 6 days a week to answer questions and help students hone their skills. The teaching will be done from WebYeshiva’s headquarters in Jerusalem but classes will be held during all time zones so that anyone in the world will be able to participate based on their own schedules.

ATID staff have been hard at work for months developing and testing the technology and training the instructors who may not be accustomed to teaching using this new medium. "Setting up WebYeshiva has been a massive undertaking," says program director Rabbi Yedidya Rausman. "We've invested a great deal of money in integrating the best software into our website so that the complexity of using WebYeshiva will be our trick to handle, making the experience really quite simple for the end-user -- that is, for our students. We've spent the past half-year setting it up, training our teachers how to best use the technology so that it serves their teaching."

Brovender points to the 15-20 teachers that are already lined up to teach classes on a full array of topics for the beginner to the advanced. He also says that since serious marketing began there has been a steady stream of interest from students around the world. "What most impresses me is the array of students we've already attracted to sign up for WebYeshiva. Even more, is the diverse cadre of teachers and rabbis that have approached us to teach on WebYeshiva. Really, it's among the cream of the crop among men and women teachers of Torah, and now our students -- no matter where they may be physically on the planet -- can study with these outstanding educators. Just go to www.WebYeshiva.org and I think you will want sign up," says Saks.

In his usual self deprecating and understated style, Brovender says he didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about. At a celebratory dinner in June in Jerusalem honoring Brovender for having reached his 40^th year of teaching Torah to Jewish students in Jerusalem and having announced that he had decided to leave his post as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat HaMivtar which he founded 40 years ago, Brovender said “I am very hopeful that I will continue to be able to do good things that will be advantageous for the community that is interested in learning Torah." After announcing his plans for WebYeshiva he said that he wasn’t trying to prove anything by using the latest fad or gimmick. “Technology just provides an opportunity to teach people you would otherwise not be able to teach. It's not about proving something through technology.”

Brovender is still doing the same thing he started doing over 40 years ago – in his words, "to teach students who might not otherwise have an opportunity to learn.” The methods and the media may have changed, but not the man nor the endeavor.

Visit www.WebYeshiva.org for more information.

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