No. 1
A beit midrash built for beginners
First-time learners are the norm here, not the special track. Hebrew reading, Chumash with meaning, halacha for real life, and the big questions taken seriously.
The Opportunity Year Ra'anana, Israel
Learn Torah.
Travel the Land.
Live in Eretz Yisrael.MasaTorah is a gap year Israel program in Ra'anana for Jewish young men from public high schools, combining beginner level Torah learning with travel across Israel.
The year a young man discovers where he comes from, and decides where he is going.
Ten months in Israel for guys who did not grow up with any of this and want it anyway. The beit midrash is built for first-time learners. The classroom is the whole country.
The idea
Half beit midrash. Half open road.
Both halves are the point.
Three weeks a month learning in Ra'anana. One week a month traveling Israel, north to south. The travel opens his heart. The learning fills it.
He will not just learn about the Land. He will live in it.
The shape of a month
- Weeks one to threeIn the beit midrash
- Morning seder built from the ground up for guys who have never opened a sefer. Afternoons for chavrusa, one to one time with the staff, sport, and chesed in the community.
- Week fourOn the road
- Out of Ra’anana and into the country. Hiking, history, and the places the morning learning was pointing at the whole time. You come back different, every single month.
What the year is made of
No. 2
Travel the whole land
The Golan in the rain, the Negev under the stars, the Kinneret, the Old City at dawn. One travel week every month, all year long.
No. 3
Brotherhood and mentors
A founding cohort capped at fifteen. Every young man is known by name, learns one to one, and gains mentors who stay in his life long after the year ends.
No. 4
A home in Ra'anana
A warm Anglo community, Shabbat tables that feel like family, and a home rather than an institution, twenty five minutes from Tel Aviv.
Scenes from our sister program
We have run this year before.
MasaTorah is new. The team is not. Everything below is Torah Tech, our sister program in Tel Aviv, where this founding team has spent years running the year in Israel that MasaTorah is built on.
Why
now
- 3,000+
- Jewish teens now begin a year in Israel annually, and the number is climbing again.
- The growth
- is coming from teens with minimal Jewish background. This is the segment reaching for more.
- 515+
- Jewish culture clubs already meet inside public high schools across North America.
The year he will never stop talking about
He arrives in September knowing how to order falafel. He leaves in June having davened sunrise on Masada, finished his first real masechta, traveled the north and the south, and sat at fifty Shabbat tables.
He leaves knowing who he is.
MasaTorah is not a semester abroad and it is not a tour. It is a year of substance with adventure as the front door: serious Jewish learning made genuinely accessible, wrapped in the kind of year an eighteen-year-old brags about. Housing, meals, health coverage, and every trip are part of the program.
Are you ready for the year that changes everything?
The founding cohort is fifteen young men. Applications for September 2027 are open, and we read every single one.