Neve Yerushalayim
college for Jewish women
Neve Yerushalayim (Hebrew: נוה ירושלים) is the oldest and largest college for Jewish women in the world. Founded in 1970 to educate baalot teshuva (female returnees to Orthodox Judaism) in the why and how of living an Orthodox Jewish life, Neve has approximately 35,000 alumni. Its campus in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem is also home to 11 schools and seminaries for post-high school, undergraduate, and graduate students from religious backgrounds.
History
Neve was founded in 1970 by Rabbi Dovid Refson, the British-born alumnus of the Gateshead Yeshiva and Yeshivas Knesses Chizkiyahu. After his marriage, he entered the kollel at the Harry Fischel Institute in Jerusalem and began delivering shiurim to American students. Deciding to open his own yeshiva, he placed an advertisement in The Jerusalem Post and was surprised when three young women showed up. "I thought yeshivah meant for boys, but apparently, in some places, yeshivah can mean a girls' school as well", he said. The staff "adapted" to the new reality, and Neve was born. Soon after, Rabbi Moshe Chalkowski came on board as principal.
Students began arriving at the school on the recommendation of Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and the Chabad movement.
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This entry incorporates text from “Neve Yerushalayim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.