Home>>Who We Are>>President’s Letter

As I consider YCT’s mission to bring vibrant Torah leadership to our Orthodox community and to the entire Jewish community, I am drawn to the models of Avraham and of Yitzchak and the complementary roles that they played in the founding of our Peoplehood.

Avraham is the visionary; he bravely breaks from the past and pursues a new path. He is a seeker, willing to abandon a comfortable existence to discover world-shaping truths. In his quest for an authentic life for himself and for us, his descendents, Avraham strives daily to understand God’s will and to live a life propelled by moral and religious imperatives.

Yitzchak anchors our faith and ensures continuity. After his father’s efforts to create a new nation by leaving his home, Yitzchak rejects a life of wandering, stays in the land, and grounds Judaism with a firm foundation. He creates the necessary structure for our Peoplehood with patterns of practice and a sense of communal stability. And Yitzchak redigs old wells and digs new ones, ensuring that these traditional practices remain vibrant, spiritually nourishing, and life-giving.

Jewish history has had many idealistic, even prophetic, Avrahams: visionaries who have responded to the challenges of their day and have created our world anew. Without such Avrahams, we — as a people, a culture, and a religious force — would have remained fixed in the past. But we have survived as a people because we have had Yitzchaks too, leaders who sustain, nurture and support us so that we can hold fast to our traditions and commitments and transmit them to the next generation. These pragmatists rely on an unchanging bedrock from which to lead.

In my role as President and Rosh HaYeshivah, I aim to sustain and expand YCT’s mission to teach, train and support rabbis and religious leaders who embody the qualities of both Avraham and Yitzchak. A leader purely in the model of Avraham may find himself anchorless, always seeking, never able to build and sustain a community. A leader only in the model of Yitzchak, however, may ensure continuity but fail to provide relevance, direction, and a larger sense of purpose. Taken together, the models of Avraham and Yitzchak compel us to engage deeply with tradition, halakha, text, and history while responding to the challenges of the modern world and addressing our profound yearning for significance and truth.

Rabbi Dov Linzer, President and Rosh Yeshiva

News from the Yeshiva

  • Rabbi Avi Weiss

    Ahavnu Viduy by Rabbi Avi Weiss

  • Rabbi Dov Linzer Photograph of Rabbi Dov Linzer showing the top half of him. He is a middle aged man with beige skin and his body is slightly angled away from the camera. He has a wide slightly open mouthed smile and is clean shaven. He has short brown hair and is wearing a black keepah. He has circular wire-rimmed glasses and is wearing a navy blue suit with a white button down shirt and a sky blue tie with royal blue hollowed out triangle patterns. The background is blurry and shows a white wall with a sefer of gemarah or mishnah directly behind him.

    Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice at Rosh Hashana

  • Photograph of Rabbi Aaron Portman. Image of a man, from the shoulders up, facing the camera with head slightly tilted to the right, smiling broadly. His eyes are dark, possibly green, and partly closed, he appears to be in his 20s-30s and he has light, pinkish sandy toned skin. He has short, dirty blonde hair that curls slightly upwards, he has stubble around the bottom half of his face. He is wearing bright red-orange tortoise shell, circular glasses. He is also wearing a navy blue collared shirt and a black suit jacket. The background of the image is blurry and indistinct and contains patches of forest green, pastel yellow, sky blue and pastel orange.

    Rabbi Portman appointed senior Jewish educator and campus rabbi at OSU Hillel

  • Brandeis Photograph of Brandeis University in front of the Brandeis University sign. The sign is a large rectangular slab of off-white stone held up by 2 stone blocks with grooves cut through the middle for the sign to rest in, the blocks are the same color and material. On the sign, carved in large block font that makes the letters appear black is "BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY". To the left of the words is the Brandeis logo. The words and symbols are hard to make out but the image is a circle within a circle with the larger circle having words written within going around the inner circumference. The only word that is clear is the one on top that says "TRUTH", all the words appear similar to the larger ones on the Brandeis sign. The inner circle has a shield with light rays extending outwards in all directions. Inside the shield are 3 lit candles in the middle with an indeterminate word on top and "אמת" on the bottom. The sign is resting in a large patch of soil with 2 small spot lights and a small bed of yellow and purple flowers. The background of the image is a manicured green grassy lawn with a few large green leafy trees on the left and right and metal poles holding up banners dotted around. There is a large yellow and white flower patch directly behind the sign and there is an off-white stone sidewalk swerving upwards towards a set of large rectangular buildings. The building on the right is grey with many blueish windows on the bottom half. the middle building is shaped like 90 degree line with mostly blue-green glass and the building on the right is red-brown brick. The sky is light royal blue with wispy white and blue-grey clouds.

    Brandeis is ‘Anything But’ Bad for Observant Jews

  • A Year of Strong & Steady Growth: YCT Highlights of ’22-’23

  • Photograph of Rabbi Ari Hart Photo of a man from the shoulders up. He appears to be in his 30s or early 40s and has sandy toned skin and neat yet curly short dark brown hair. He has a neat, short, full face beard with connected mustache and possibly brown eyes. He has a toothy smile and is facing the camera. He is wearing circular dark tortoise shell glasses, a charcoal grey suit and a white button down shirt. The background of the image is white.

    Skokie Synagogue Renovation Reflects Congregation’s Recent Renaissance

  • YCT Torah Climate flyer - details in post

    Torah Essay Contest: What does the Torah have to say about the climate crisis?

  • Photograph of UCLA (university of California, Los Angeles) Hillel building. Image of a grey stone building made up of large rectangular blocks arranges vertically with small window-like gaps spread throughout. The building appears to be about 3 floors tall with a large windowed balcony section on the top left and what might be a large square garage entrance on the bottom right and a big stone arch main entrance. To the right and left of the building are some scraggly trees with an asphalt road/ walk-way leading up to and past the building. The sky behind the structure is a bright, cloudless blue.

    How Hillel at UCLA Moved beyond Tolerance to Embrace Difference

  • Balbino Cotarelo Nunez

    El Salvador: A Trip Beyond My Comfort Zone

  • Photograph of Rabbi Kyle Savitch Image of a man, facing the camera, with a grey background. He appears to be in his 30s and has a pinkish-beige skin tone, green eyes and has a slightly open mouthed broad smile. He has wavy dirty-blonde hair and a short full-faced beard with connect mustache. He is wearing a dark maroon sweater-coat with a vertical blue and white striped button down shirt.

    Rabbi Kyle Savitch (’21) Holds Both Jewish Tradition and Modern Sensibilities in His Hands with Kehillat Harlem