Yeshivat Har Etzion

Yeshivat Har Etzion (YHE; ישיבת הר עציון), commonly known in English as "Gush" and in Hebrew as "Yeshivat HaGush", is a hesder yeshiva located in Alon Shvut, an Israeli settlement in Gush Etzion. It is considered one of the leading institutions of advanced Torah study in the world and with a student body of roughly 480, it is one of the largest hesder yeshivot in the West Bank. In 1968, shortly after the Six-Day War, a movement was founded to resettle the Gush Etzion region, from which Jews had been expelled following the Kfar Etzion massacre. Yehuda Amital, a prominent rabbi and Jewish educator, was asked to head a yeshiva in the region. In 1971, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein moved from the United States to join Amital as rosh yeshiva. First established in Kfar Etzion, it moved to Alon Shvut, where it developed into a major institution. The current yeshiva building was finished in 1977. In 1997 a women’s beit midrash was established for Israeli and overseas students as a sister school in Kibbutz Migdal Oz, which goes by the name Migdal Oz. On January 4, 2006, Rabbis Yaakov Medan and Baruch Gigi joined Amital and Lichtenstein as rashei yeshiva in anticipation of Amital's upcoming retirement. Amital's involvement in the yeshiva effectively ended due to illness in the later months of 2009, and he died in July 2010. Mosheh Lichtenstein, son of Aharon Lichtenstein, was appointed as rosh yeshiva alongside and to eventually replace his father in 2008; Aharon Lichtenstein died in April 2015. The current rashei yeshiva are Rav Yaakov Medan, Rav Baruch Gigi and Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein. Most of the students are Israelis in the hesder program, which integrates intensive yeshiva study with at least 15 months of active service in the Israel Defense Forces, an idea developed by the founding Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Yehuda Amital. There is a post-high school overseas program which receives students from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. There is also a Southern Hemisphere program for students from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia under Bnei Akiva's MTA program.