Heichal HaTorah


Yeshiva Heichal HaTorah is an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva High school located in Teaneck, New Jersey. The institution owns and operates the Jewish Center of Teaneck, where it is located. Heichal is unaffiliated with Israeli yeshivas under the same name.
The school had 150 students enrolled for the 2019-20 school year

History

Heichal HaTorah was established by Aryeh Stechler, Avi Goldenberg, and Yehuda Jacoby, who got together in the autumn of 2012 to begin putting together a yeshiva high school that would begin classes the following fall. Their idea was to create an institution that combined a classic yeshiva schedule with a rigorous secular studies department. The feeling at the time was that most yeshiva high schools, nationally as well as locally, were too polarized, that is to say, either secular studies was not taken seriously enough to give students the skill sets needed for college and the modern workplace; or they gave secular studies so much weight that it infringed on the ability of students to develop their Torah studies sufficiently.
The school aimed to create a true dual-curriculum, but not a system of equals.
Heichal HaTorah greeted its first class of 17 students on September 4, 2013. It graduated its first class on June 14, 2017.
In 2017, Heichal introduced a Tikvah Humanities curriculum into its General studies courses. The course, in parternership with the Tikvah Fund, an educational foundation in New York, implements a neo-classical historical and literary curriculum. In 2019, Heichal's Tikvah curriculum was the subject of a Wall Street Journal opinion article entitled "Jerusalem meets Athens in New Jersey".

Athletic program

Heichal HaTorah sponsors its own varsity and junior varsity basketball and softball teams known as the Heichal Hornets. In 2018, the Heichal Hornets won the NCYI JV Basketball League championship.

Leadership