History
The origins of Yeshiva Chovevei Torah go back to 1996, when Rabbis Avi Weiss and Saul Berman founded a program known as MeORoT (Modern Orthodox Rabbinic Training) which provided supplemental lectures on issues in Modern Orthodoxy to rabbinical students then enrolled in Yeshiva University. The fellowship at that time was co-sponsored by Yeshiva University, Edah and Weiss's synagogue, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. In the following year, 1997, Weiss added the Torat Miriam Fellowship to the MeORoT program, inviting women involved in Jewish Studies on the graduate level to participate in these lectures.
In September 1999, Weiss and Rabbi Dov Linzer launched Yeshivat Chovevei Torah as an undergraduate learning program primarily for students in Columbia University and Barnard College. The YCT University Program had Rabbi Linzer serving as its Rosh HaYeshiva and was housed at Congregation Ramath Orah, a Modern Orthodox congregation on 110th Street in Manhattan. The faculty consisted of three recent graduates of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) affiliated with Yeshiva University: Rabbi Dov Weiss, who also directed the program, Rabbi Barry Wimpfheimer, and Rabbi Ari Perl.
In January 2000, the leadership of the YCT university program, which consisted of Avi Weiss, Berman, Linzer and Dov Weiss decided to create a rabbinical school which would officially open in September 2000. In September 2000, the rabbinical school welcomed its first class of 7 students.
In January 2004, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah moved from its location in Ramath Orah to the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School on 60th Street and West End Avenue and then to the Kraft Center/Columbia Barnard Hillel on 115th Street in July 2005. After spending five full years at the Columbia Hillel, the school then left Manhattan in the summer of 2010, moving to the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, where it is at present.
Controversies over YCT came to a head when in 2006 YCT applied for membership in the Rabbinical Council of America, the rabbinical body affiliated with the Orthodox Union, the largest North American Modern and Centrist Orthodox body. YCT subsequently withdrew their application when it became apparent that the application would be denied.
Having reportedly ordained 27 rabbis as of June 2006, the count nearly doubled by June 2009 to 54, who, not being eligible for RCA membership, can join The Rabbinic Fellowship, an organization co-founded in 2008 by Rabbis Avi Weiss and Marc Angel.
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