Rabbi Elchanan Shoff Always knew he would create his own yeshiva. After introducing The New Yeshiva High School of Los Angeles to Journal readers last week, he made a pledge: “We are going to create an institution packed with love of Torah and positivity and Jewish pride and a connection to Jewish learning. That is the entire purpose.”

The yeshiva, located at 1540 S. Robertson Boulevard (north of Pickford Street) is set to open in late summer, and Rabbi Shoff addressed the crucial question for many families: How much will it cost?

“Tuition is going to be less than $25,000,” he said. He admitted “it sounds absurdly high in one sense. At the same time the competition is coming in a lot higher. There are things the competition certainly offers, there are extracurriculars, magnificent buildings they maintain and offer to their students. They are really just charging what it costs.”

He discovered that tuition at local Orthodox schools ranges upwards from $30,000. In response, the rabbi firmly declared “number one, we are trying to come in low. But we also are making it clear the money is just not the concern. If somebody has less than that, they will pay less. A person has to pay their share to the best they can.”

The rabbi, who founded the Pico-Robertson congregation Bais Knesses Los Angeles in 2013, is doing a balancing act between costs of opening/leading a yeshiva and making the school affordable to the community. On the one hand, said the rabbi, “that just cannot be what the school stands for. The problem is, [the project] requires a lot of infrastructure, a lot of background.”

When he was approached with the opportunity to not be so concerned about the money and concentrate his attention where he could be most effective, “that was something I just could not turn down,” he said. And, as the father of seven, he understands why tuition should be affordable.

“When someone short of money applies, I can turn to our backers. To me that is an important ideal (though other schools do it, too). It is a very important ideal that you can’t make it based on money – at the same time, we have this real problem.”

The classically-educated rabbi learned a bedrock value: “One of my [yeshiva teachers] taught me that money never is the appropriate way to make a meaningful decision in life. If you have to go to the dentist because your mouth is in agony, you go. You will figure out the expense later. You just go.” So, “if it is the right thing, then it’s the right thing and you think about the money afterwards. If it’s not the right thing, what does the money matter anyway?

“If it is what is right, we have the faith and trust that God will give us the opportunity to pay those bills.”

Rabbi Shoff raved about the “beautiful building” that will house the first students, calling it “a beautiful, well-appointed space.” For the initially small student body, just a handful of classrooms are more than will be needed for the first year. “We will be able, at least in the beginning, until the school grows into those classrooms, we will be able to use one as a workout gym,” the rabbi said.

Shoff has other creative ideas in mind to make the experience pleasant for the boys. He glows when he lists some of the yeshiva’s assets: offices, a large kitchen/dining room and a sizable yard. It’s “a lovely building, property quite suitable for a high school.”

As the school grows he plans build it up into a couple of stories, “a much larger and well-appointed edifice.”  The campus is two properties next to each other – a “very large” Bais Midrash, with the other half containing a number of classrooms, offices and a smaller Bais Midrash.

The yeshiva is expected to open with one grade, the ninth. “Essentially,” the rabbi explained, “we are looking at Los Angeles, and we see an opportunity to meet the needs of certain boys whose needs, I feel, are not being met.”

Setting up his next point, “the black hat community has some beautiful schools that are very effective. When it comes to the community outside of the black hat community, that still is Orthodox, the schools that exist now are beautiful properties that, from my assessment, are community schools.”

A wide range of students attend those schools, he said. “Some are from homes that are more meticulous about Shabbat and keeping kosher, some are less so. It’s a broad range in a way that is very beautiful. I mean, it’s nice there is a certain unity, and many students really thrive.”

There are other parents, he said “who feel very strongly that their children do better in a less exposed environment.” And there are even “elementary schools that are more limited in terms of their exposure, their environment and what sort of students are there. By the time they get to high school, they all sort of channel into the same schools.”

Rabbi Shoff described his ideal students: “Boys who are a little bit right of center, a little bit more from the observant homes where the parents would prefer the environment would be what I would call wholesome.”

He said the dress code and the population will not look like a black hat high school. Rather, the dress code will be similar to what you would find in YULA or Valley Torah. The boys are going to come from right-of-center Modern Orthodox homes or, in theory, from homes that are more in the black hat world — but the children need something a little bit outside of it. They may need a more rigorous General Studies program, or for sports to be a little more of a focus or certain extra-curriculars.

He then asked, “But what are we going to do?” He had the answer at the ready. “We will have a wonderfully warm, emotionally healthy place where it is a pleasure to come in. People are smiling and positive. The staff is picked with that orientation of warmth, positivity and also seriousness about Jewish learning and Jewish values. This is the most magnificent, beautiful way we can spend our time.”

When the bell rings, the rabbi expects to enroll 10 boys in the first freshman class of The New Yeshiva High School. “This is a very ambitious idea,” said Rabbi Shoff. “We have been overwhelmed with positive feedback.”

In his 13th year as leader of Congregation Beis Knesses of Los Angeles, which he founded, Rabbi Elchanan Shoff is launching a major new project, a yeshiva on Robertson Boulevard.

“We have been overwhelmed by the positive feedback,” he said of The New Yeshiva High School of Los Angeles, due to open this summer.

Shoff, who teaches at Touro College of Los Angeles, explained the idea has been percolating for a quarter-century, “ever since I was a counselor in summer camps when I was a single person. I was 17 then, and now I am 42.”

The Venice native has been working with high school-aged students “all the way through — in various capacities.”

There never was a doubt about his career, or about the specific routes. “The boys in my bunk in camp when they were in the eighth grade, I kind of stuck with many of them,” he said. “I was just a young guy, and when they came to Israel to learn in yeshiva, living there and teaching, they would come to my classes. I became a rebbe of theirs, and for several of them, I officiated at their weddings.”

For Rabbi Shoff, teaching high school was a job he always felt connected to.

Steeped in Talmudic knowledge, the always frank rav did not disappoint when asked why he concentrates on high school and not on older students.

“I still am somewhat in touch with my immature side,” he said. “And so when I look in the mirror, I am absolutely astonished that I don’t look 17. ‘There’s got to be something wrong with this mirror,’ I tell myself.”

He explained the lure to upper grades.

“I always have connected to education,” he said. “The high school age has been strong for me because it’s a nice mix between the emotional connection, which you always must have with students, and there’s also an intellectual aspect as well. You can connect in a very different way with a 16- or 17-year-old than you can with a five- or six-year-old. Even though I value all education — it’s extremely important — I found that was the place I had the strongest ability to understand and to connect.”

Both halves of that response are crucial. “You can talk about ideas,” he said. He cites one of Rashi’s comments to Tractate Kedushin that says between the ages of 16 and 24, those are the years when people are most likely to be able to accept meaningful direction.

Referencing the Talmud, Rabbi Shoff expanded his reasoning. “When students are younger, their brain is not quite developed enough to have that kind of insight,” he said. “They are not that self-critical and willing to make adjustments. And when they are a little bit older, they are set in their ways. They don’t want to hear from anybody.”

The Talmud identifies the ideal learning stages as between 16 and 22 or 18 and 24.

To illustrate his point, the rabbi noted that post-high school, for example, when boys and girls go to Israel, oftentimes people will say ‘Oh, what is this? They should have gotten it by now.’ Post-high school is a really healthy age to be a little independent. But if you would send a bunch of 14-year-olds, they are not ready. Every age has its time.”

Another reason Rabbi Shoff concentrates on high school learners: He believes high school is “a critical, pivotal time in instilling real Jewish values. Skills you can get while your mind still is open to all that learning are very different from what you can develop later when you are an adult and trying to make up those years.”

Rabbi Shoff then turned to The New Yeshiva High School of Los Angeles.

“In many ways it can feel like a pipe dream,” he said. “This is a very expensive endeavor. Not until you have a really full school can you limit your losses. Financially, Jewish schools do not make sense. The money it costs – even within LAUSD where they have this massive amount of volume. In order to educate one child, it is close to what tuitions are in Jewish private schools. But we don’t have any of those benefits.”

Which is the greater challenge – finding enough students, or being able to financially support a project?

“Both are formidable challenges,” the rabbi said. “My skillset is more suited to building a student body –in a direction students and parents can buy into. My skillset is not necessarily the enormous amount of fundraising it would require – the millions you would have to lose to build a staff, to have an infrastructure, and a building when maybe in the first class you get – best-case scenario – 10 or 15 boys. To break even financially, in theory you would need to have full tuition from maybe 80 students.”

While expenses rise as another grade is added and more teachers are needed, Rabbi Shoff said “the basic infrastructure that’s required is challenging. Even the schools that are very successful in their student bodies still require enormous investment financially in terms of fundraising.”

He described Jewish education as an enormous value for the frum community. Rabbi Shoff arrived at the heart of the matter: “In the Orthodox community it is seen as an inviolate right that every single young Jewish person should have an opportunity to get a Torah education. If a family doesn’t have the money for tuitions, we take what they can pay. In the more liberal Jewish communities, a private school education is a luxury.” 

Fast Takes with Rabbi Shoff

Jewish Journal: Your favorite music?

Rabbi Shoff: Contemporary Jewish music, specifically like the Miami Boys Choir.

JJ:  Where do you go for news of the world?

RS: Fridays, outside of the men’s mikvah.

JJ: Your favorite Shabbat moment?

RS: That feeling after you have eaten the cholent on Shabbos day and you can’t move your body.