As Ohr Yisroel in Tenafly, NJ opens its doors this week, Rabbi Scott Friedman knows his own success can be accessed by anyone

Photos: Mordechai Hahn

Rabbi Scott Friedman, head of school for the nascent Yeshiva Ohr Yisroel in Tenafly, New Jersey, never dreamed that he would dedicate his life to inspiring the kind of religiously alienated teen that he himself once personified.

He describes his Jewish education as mostly cultural and his grade school performance as religiously disengaged and apathetic.

“I was completely disconnected. I felt that they were teaching us from meaningless, archaic books, like I could have as easily been learning in Japanese. The rabbanim couldn’t convey any meaning to me,” he reflects on those early elementary school years. High school downgraded his feelings about frumkeit from “irrelevant to downright painful.”

Today, this yeshivah founder, experienced rebbi, Columbia University-educated therapist, and former religiously disenchanted teen, has created and runs a high school where he fearlessly embraces out-of-the-box methods in order to infuse his students with a lifelong love for learning. Rabbi Friedman believes that his personal journey is not unique, and that his eventual success, the life balance he’s created, and the deep, meaningful relationship he’s forged with Hashem, can be accessed by all young people, just as it was by him.

Leaning on the support and guidance of daas Torah, including Rav Yerucham Olshin, Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky, Rav Elya Brudny, Rav Avrohom Schorr, and Rav Menachem Zupnick, Rabbi Friedman’s goal is to provide disconnected or marginalized kids with that “Aha!” moment that will turn them on to Torah and mitzvos.

Rabbi Friedman’s personal experience attests to how many contemporary high school students feel disenfranchised and indifferent to Torah learning. His previous years of experience as a rebbi who followed up with his graduates showed him that the ubiquitous “year in Israel” is often eaten up by an initial stage of partying, followed by a too-short period of growth and inspiration. On that basis, he and his colleagues at Ohr Yisroel believe that this growth process should be accelerated — that the “Eretz Yisrael inspiration” should be provided earlier, at the high school level.

Although he was a successful rebbi at Torah Academy of Bergen County, in 2020 he partnered with Rabbi Asher Yablok, his colleague and former head of school at TABC, and Dr. Joe Rozehzadeh as board chair, to create a yeshivah high school designed to mirror the Israel yeshivah experience more closely and to help talmidim rebuild a relationship with Hashem that would turn around their attitude and approach to learning. In creating Yeshiva Ohr Yisroel of Tenafly, Rabbi Friedman’s goal was to create an environment for talmidim that would be completely lishmah.

“You can’t make someone learn, but you can teach him to love learning, so he’ll do it for the rest of his life,” Rabbi Friedman says. “We want to make a connection with their hearts and souls, so they’ll have the confidence to believe in themselves. If you can show them the love and the beauty, they’ll stay with it. We want to create lifetime learners.”

Perusing the student body of this school, whose first class entered in 2020, one might think that it’s a bit of a stretch, but Rabbi Friedman really believes in his students — and because he does, so do they. Because, he explains, “when they connect to that place of self-acceptance and inner joy, they’ll be willing and even happy to stretch themselves a bit further.”