Machon Meir () is a Religious Zionist yeshiva and Jewish outreach organization in Kiryat Moshe, Jerusalem.
Founded in 1974 by Rabbi following the Yom Kippur War, it became one of the early institutions of the Religious Zionist teshuva (Jewish repentance) movement. Shaped by the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the institute developed from a small Jerusalem study group into an educational center serving students from Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
Machon Meir primarily serves students with limited prior Jewish education, combining Torah study with Hebrew instruction and personal guidance. It offers programs in Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, and Russian, as well as conversion preparation, and is associated with the Machon Ora women's seminary. Its activities also include publishing and the Arutz Meir educational media network, which produces and distributes Torah classes and other programming, including content for children. Former students include Israeli military officers, politicians, rabbis, and heads of religious educational institutions.
History Machon Meir was founded in Jerusalem in 1974, following the Yom Kippur War (1973), by Rabbi , who had studied for over a decade at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva under Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. Bigon, himself a baal teshuva (a previously non-observant Jew who became religiously observant), assisted soldiers and students who came to Mercaz HaRav following the war seeking religious guidance.
Bigon initially invited the soldiers and students to his home; as the group grew, these gatherings developed into the establishment of Machon Meir. Before establishing the institute, Bigon consulted with Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and Rabbi Haim Druckman. It was named in memory of Eliezer Meir Lifshitz, a paratrooper reservist who was killed in the war.
It was one of the Religious Zionist educational initiatives that developed after the war—a Torah-study institution shaped by the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and oriented especially toward chozrim b'teshuva (Jews returning to religious observance) from Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
Sharabi sees the emergence of the Israeli teshuva movement as occurring in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Specifically, he identifies the Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War as important catalysts in its development. He argues that the experiences of these wars prompted questions about identity, existence, and the meaning of individual and national life, with some Israelis turning to Jewish tradition in search of answers on personal and national levels. He notes that institutional teshuva activity began during the 1970s and included yeshiva study, rabbinic teaching, seminars, and other forms of religious outreach.
Sharabi distinguishes different streams within the broader teshuva movement, including Lithuanian-Haredi, Hasidic, Sephardic-Haredi, Kabbalistic, and Religious-Zionist approaches. He describes the Religious-Zionist teshuva movement as comparatively small during its early development and notes that it did not begin vigorous activity until the mid-1990s.
In this context, Sharabi sees the establishment of Machon Meir in Jerusalem in the 1970s as marking the beginning of Religious-Zionist teshuva, alongside the establishment of small religious communities in peripheral Israeli cities.
Goldberg described Machon Meir as the largest of the teshuva initiatives examined in his survey. In 1980, it operated three full-time yeshivot: a men's yeshiva in Jerusalem and two women's yeshivot, one in Jerusalem and another in Kiryat Arba, with approximately 230 full-time students in total. It also maintained 14 branches throughout Israel, extending from Eilat in the south to the Golan Heights in the north.
In 1980, approximately 3,500 people attended classes each week, with a further 6,500 attending intermittently.
Educational approach The yeshiva primarily serves students with limited prior Jewish education and provides Hebrew-language instruction alongside its Torah study courses.
Machon Meir developed as an early institution within the broader Religious-Zionist teshuva movement. In his study of that more general movement, rather than of Machon Meir specifically, Sharabi describes an educational approach centered on textual study, intellectual engagement, and gradual religious development.
In the Religious-Zionist centers that he studied, students worked with rabbis and instructors using texts such as the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), the writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Rabbi Judah Halevi's Kuzari, Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's Mesillat Yesharim, and Tanya. Students worked closely with texts or handouts, studying and interpreting them word by word rather than simply listening to homiletic preaching. Sharabi describes this form of study as taking on the attributes of a seminar or workshop, in which participants are given latitude to engage with texts, question them, and participate in intellectual discussion. He argues that this creates a degree of intellectual distance from immediate religious pressure and diminishes the coercive aspect of religious outreach.
Sharabi treats this as part of what he calls the "intellectualization of religion", in which religious engagement is approached through analysis, study, and understanding. He also emphasizes gradualism in the Religious-Zionist teshuva model. Rather than pressuring participants to make immediate radical changes in their religious observance, the approach he studied emphasized breathing space, gradual learning, and teshuva as a continuous process rather than an abrupt transformation. Sharabi connects this lack of pressure with the concept of berur—exploration, clarification, or working things out intellectually and spiritually before reaching decisions about religious practice. Participants describe being given time to connect to religious ideas philosophically, spiritually, and intellectually, and to decide for themselves when to assume practical religious observance.
Military service was encouraged, while participants in Machon Meir's broader educational activities were not required to commit themselves to Orthodox Jewish beliefs or practices. Full-time students, however, were required to observe Shabbat, adhere to the Jewish dietary laws, and maintain tzniut (modest) standards of dress. Living in Israel and Jewish settlement throughout Eretz Yisrael were emphasized as integral elements of the institute's religious outlook.
The institute provides personal guidance tailored to its students' different educational backgrounds. Educational activities seek to connect classroom Torah study with the land and history of Israel through trips to natural, biblical, and archaeological sites. Hebrew study and interaction with Israeli students are intended to help students integrate into Israeli society.
Leadership and faculty Machon Meir is headed by its founder, Rabbi .
Rabbi Ran Ben Moshe, a former head of the Beit Rimon pre-military academy and former lecturer at the Hesder yeshiva (an Israeli yeshiva combining Torah study with military service) in Safed, joined Machon Meir in 2024, when Rabbi Dov Bigon placed him in charge of the institute's beit midrash (Jewish study hall). He currently coordinates the institute's Israeli program.
The institute's foreign-language departments are headed by Rabbi Menachem Listman (English), Rabbi David Partouche (French), Rabbi Rafael Spangenthal (Spanish), and Rabbi Avraham Adler (Russian); Rabbi Eliyahu Berezhinsky serves as assistant head of the Russian-speaking department.
Longtime faculty include Rabbi Oury Amos Cherki, a lecturer at the institute, and former Soviet refusenik (a Soviet Jew denied permission to emigrate) and Prisoner of Zion (a Jew imprisoned for Zionist activity or efforts to emigrate to Israel) Rabbi Yosef Mendelevitch, who helped establish its Russian-speaking department around 1990 and continued teaching at Machon Meir into the 2020s.
Notable former students
Machon Meir graduates include senior military officers and heads of yeshivot.
Among the institute's earliest students was Effi Eitam, who later became an IDF brigadier general, member of the Knesset, and government minister. Eitam has described Machon Meir as providing the foundations of his Torah learning and as helping shape the subsequent direction of his life.
Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, later Chief Rabbi of the IDF, studied at Machon Meir during his return to religious observance. In 1984, Rontzki was among the founders of the Itamar settlement, which was established by several families from Machon Meir.
Other former students include Orit Strook, who studied at Machon Meir during her return to religious observance and later became a member of the Knesset and a government minister, and , who later co-founded the Bnei David pre-military academy.
Structure and programs Men's yeshiva In Jerusalem, the Machon Meir yeshiva offers full-time study programs for young Jewish men with varying levels of prior Jewish education. The English-language program combines Jewish studies in the morning with Hebrew ulpan (an intensive Hebrew-language course) studies in the afternoon.
Women's seminary (Machon Ora) Machon Ora was established around 1976 as a women's counterpart to Machon Meir. It is a Jerusalem-based women's seminary associated with Machon Meir. Its educational outlook is influenced by the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Serving women from a range of religious backgrounds, it offers studies in Jewish thought, halakha, Tanakh, ethics, and preparation for Jewish family life. Its full-time program meets five days a week and combines classroom instruction with independent chavruta (paired study); the seminary also offers external and other part-time study frameworks.
Foreign-language departments In his 1980 survey, Goldberg reported that classes at Machon Meir were taught only in Hebrew. During the 1980s and 1990s, Machon Meir grew from a small apartment in Kiryat Moshe into an institution serving hundreds of students annually from around the world.
In August 1979, Rabbi Natan Ophir (Offenbacher) established a program for English speakers at Machon Meir. Rabbi Menachem Listman, who joined Machon Meir in 1981–82, later became director of its English Speakers Department.
The French-speaking section was established in 1983 by Yossef Attoun, who headed it until 2007. It developed into a framework for Jewish study and integration in Israel for French-speaking students, serving hundreds of young French speakers over the years. By 2015, Rabbi David Partouche headed Machon Meir's French department. He ran a program for secular and religious young people who came to Jerusalem for religious study. Partouche reported increasing enrollment and connected it with broader French Jewish interest in aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel).
The Russian-language department was established around 1990, and by 2020 the program operated as a year-long Jewish-studies framework serving young Jews from Russia and Ukraine. Thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union had studied in the department, many arriving with little or no Jewish educational background due to Soviet suppression of Jewish religious life.
By March 2005, Machon Meir operated an Ibero-American Department under the direction of Rabbi Rafael Spangenthal. The department served Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking students from Ibero-America and emphasized Torah study, Jewish identity, and connection with Israel.
Hebrew-language instruction