US/World News

President of NY liberal Orthodox yeshiva to step down

(JTA) – The president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT), a liberal Orthodox rabbinical school in New York City, announced that he will be leaving his post at the end of the academic year. In an unexpected move, Rabbi Asher Lopatin shared the news in a August 26 email to the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah community. Students of the yeshiva in the Riverdale section of the Bronx returned to classes this week.

YCT was founded in 1999 by maverick Orthodox Rabbi Avi Weiss and serves as a counter-voice to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, which identifies as modern Orthodox but follows a more centrist interpretation of Jewish law. YCT has sought to expand women’s ritual and clergy roles in the synagogue and reform stringent rules for conversion, among other issues. Weiss had identified the yeshiva as “Open Orthodox,” a term he coined, but which some critics said put it outside the normative Orthodox framework. Lopatin in recent years had referred to YCT as being “Modern Orthodox,” telling the New Jersey Jewish News that the “term Modern Orthodox has developed into a nice, inclusive term in the Orthodox world.”

Lopatin, 52, told The New York Jewish Week that he had no specific professional plans lined up, but that he had “lots of different opportunities.”

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