The Yeshivat Har Etzion Center for Torah Leadership (CTL) is an initiative geared to empower our considerable yeshiva alumni – both from Har Etzion and Migdal Oz – in making a genuine impact upon, and a substantive improvement in, the spiritual and physical lives of acheinu kol beit yisrael world wide.

By coordinating and financing alumni Torah, ruach and chessed initiatives in Jewish communities, and by supplying leadership opportunities and training, CTL helps our alumni provide a great service to Am Yisroel, enabling them to more fully realize their aspirations and hopes for making a real difference.

As a globally unified and cohesive alumni network of Torah, Chessed, and communal service that coordinates its activities and resources, we pray that our efforts will be crowned b’ezrat Hashem with genuine and lasting success.

Background

For over forty years at Yeshivat Har Etzion, under the inspired leadership of HaRav Yehuda Amital zt"l and Yibadel LeChaim, HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein Shlit"a, we have been imbued with a keen desire to help and assist the Jewish people. Many situations demand that in order to be effective one needs training, financial resources and a strong network of people to assist in the endeavor. This realization was the catalyst for the formation of the Yeshivat Har Etzion Center for Torah Leadership (CTL). This initiative is an important component in the actualization of the dream of our founding Rosh Ha’Yeshiva – HaRav Yehuda Amital zt”l – to raise generations of talmidim who are both alert and responsive to the needs of the Jewish people. Students and alumni can now utilize and harness CTL’s resources in the implementation of a desire – kindled in yeshiva - to enrich and positively impact upon the Jewish people.

HaRav Yehuda Amital zt”l often told us that upon establishing Yeshivat Har Etzion, he was asked what would be special about the yeshiva. In answer, he related the following story:

Rav Schneur Zalman of Liadi (the Alter Rebbe and the author of the Shulchan Aruch HaRav and the Tanya) was once studying Torah in his room, when all of a sudden he heard his infant grandson, the future author of the Tzemach Tzedek, crying in his cradle. The Rebbe closed his gemara, went into the baby’s room and soothed him back to sleep. He then went into the adjoining room where he found his son, the baby’s father (known as the “Middle Rebbe”) steeped in Torah study. The Rebbe turned to his son in astonishment and asked: “Why didn’t you get up to pacify your crying son?” The bewildered son looked up and answered: “I was so immersed in my study that I didn’t even hear him cry.” The Rebbe then declared: “If someone is studying Torah and fails to hear the cry of the baby nearby, there is something very wrong with his learning.”

HaRav Amital zt”l then went on to tell us that this has been the message of Yeshivat Har Etzion from its very establishment: to be attentive to “the crying” in the widest sense of the term – that is to say, to be alert and responsive to those in need, especially when it comes to the concerns facing the Jewish people.