We are excited to welcome special guest lecturer Rabbi Haggai Resnikoff  on Wednesday evening, January 17th,  who will be speaking on the topic, "Gedolim vs. Local Rabbis: Ideals of Rabbinic Authority "

The question of who should hold rabbinic authority, a small cadre of scholars who have been immersed in the yeshiva for their entire lives with vast expertise in all areas of Torah, or local rabbis, with more sensitive to the specific needs of their communities, is one that touches almost every major controversy in the Orthodox world today: agunot, conversion, medical ethics, eruvin, and more. This lecture will explore the historical, theological and halakhic underpinnings of both camps with an eye to evaluating whether either position could be considered more authentic.

All are welcome to attend, pizza will be served! Please RSVP using the form below.

Rabbi Haggai Resnikoff is Rebbe & Director of Community Learning at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School (YCT), an Orthodox rabbinical school that teaches an inclusive and welcoming Torah. He learned for two years at Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati at Ein Tzurim before majoring in history at the University of California in Berkeley. Following graduation from Berkeley he spent several years in Israel doing graduate coursework in the Hebrew University Talmud Department and learning in various Batei Midrash in Jerusalem. He trained at YCT after spending a year as a Judaic Studies teacher at Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito, California and graduated in 2014. He is presently the project director of the Torat Chovevei Community Learning Project which seeks to spread YCT’s message of openness and sensitivity in scholarship to communities across the United States.