Recognizing the critical importance that pastoral counseling plays in the rabbinate, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah places particular emphasis on its Pastoral Counseling Curriculum. Yeshivat Chovevei Torah is the only rabbinical school with a four-year pastoral counseling program. Taught by leading psychiatric professionals, this intensive curriculum includes formal classroom instruction, role-playing, clinical experience and mentored field work. The formal curriculum consists of classroom instruction and role-playing exercises. Students are taught the basic tools of interviewing, how to recognize mental illness and the resources available to them as rabbis. Particular emphasis is placed on topics that rabbis regularly encounter: religious doubt and personal change; rites of passage; adolescence; substance abuse; marital and family problems; sexual function and dysfunction; homosexuality; domestic violence; loss, tragedy and bereavement; and response to catastrophe.

The first-year courses are organized around basic principles of counseling. The second-year courses follow the life cycle, giving an overview of normal development as well as addressing potential difficulties. In their third and fourth years, students take seminars in chaplaincy, marital and family therapy, and psychology and religion. Fieldwork with direct clinical supervision is an essential part of the curriculum. In their third and fourth years, students rotate through an intensive chaplaincy program and meet regularly with senior clinicians to discuss pastoral issues that arise during their internships. This intensive theoretical and practical course of study ensures that, by graduation, students will emerge as rabbis who are empathic, trained and knowledgeable pastoral counselors. 

Each year of YCT students has a mental health professional who meets with that group 1 hour weekly for the full four years of the program. In this completely confidential setting, students are free to explore issues of faith, authority, training, personal situation, etc. We believe that by offering students this opportunity we create an atmosphere of trust and respect that will extend to their capacity for compassion and tolerance once they leave the yeshiva.

A certified social worker, who is herself married to a rabbi meets with students’ spouses monthly providing them the opportunity to discuss the role of being married to a rabbi – impact on family life, privacy, and religious expectations.