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New Yeshiva Opening in Elkins Park
on High School Road
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
L ike many New Yorkers, Rabbi
Yehoshua Rubanowitz felt sur-
rounded by strangers. He felt like
his community was scattered. And he
felt like he could never own anything,
just rent.

Except Rubanowitz was not just any
New York City resident. He was the
rosh yeshiva for the Yeshiva Gedolah
in Washington Heights, a Manhattan
neighborhood. So, if he moved, the 100-
plus student institution would move
with him.

By January of 2021, moving was not
a matter of if, but when and where,
according to the rabbi. He said he
looked at 13 or 14 places in the tri-state
area. But it was not until he got a tip
about one in the Philadelphia suburbs
that he figured out where he was going.

After getting that tip, Rubanowitz
visited the former Congregation Kol
Ami property at 8201 High School Road
in Elkins Park, and he was sold on the
spot. The rabbi loved the quiet, sub-
urban location, the building that was
already zoned for a school and the plot
of land that was big enough to include
a dormitory and was affordable enough
to buy.

Over Labor Day weekend, the Yeshiva
Gedolah received the necessary approv-
als from Cheltenham Township to open
for the 2022-’23 school year, according
to the rabbi. It will open with space
for 108 students and 12 staff members.

Students will live in the yeshiva’s sec-
ond-floor dormitory on the same site as
the school building.

Unlike in New York, they will not be
scattered in different, rented-out apart-
ment units. They will live together on a
property that the yeshiva owns.

“They feel like one group. That’s
the environment they’re used to,”
Rubanowitz said. “They come to the
school as a group.”
Rubanowitz started the school for
18- to 21-year-olds to study Talmud
13 years ago and grew it from eight
students to more than 100. But then
he capped enrollment. He said a rela-
tionship between a rosh yeshiva and a
Talmudic scholar is “forever,” and that
he wanted to be able to devote enough
time and attention to each student.

Rubanowitz describes himself as the
yeshiva’s dean, lecturer, teacher and
rabbi. And to each scholar, he is a men-
tor and leader.

The rosh yeshiva said he discovered
years ago that God granted him the
ability to teach college kids. It is a skill
he has confidence in. It’s also the one he
wishes to focus upon.

His vision, he explained, is what you
will see inside the doors at 8201 High
School Road: students learning in com-
munity with one another.

“The yeshiva is done,” Rubanowitz
said. “Whatever happens in the com-
munity, if it grows it grows.”
But the rabbi chose Elkins Park because
he believed it could offer fertile ground
for his students and their post-yeshiva
pursuits. Rubanowitz estimates that only
about 10% of them, if that, will become
rabbis once they leave the 7.5-acre,
40,000-square-foot property.

Many yeshiva scholars go on to
medical school, law school and other
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