Machon Sarah High School

Back in 1991, Rabbi Yisroel Morgenstern (then the dean of Ottawa Torah Institute), along with a handful of parents, founded Machon Sarah High School. His goal was to offer Torah-true high school education to the Jewish girls of Ottawa. Before Machon Sarah, families seeking an Orthodox education for their daughters sent them to schools out-of-town (usually in Toronto). Other families, unaware of the beauty and joys offered by an intensive immersion in Torah life, simply missed the opportunity entirely.

Since then, we’ve seen around thirty girls graduate and go on to play a wide variety of roles within the Jewish community. They can be found in Torah education, secular academics and plain old healthy family living. Their confidence and remarkably strong and durable friendships (and steady contact with their former teachers) are evidence of the important place Machon Sarah has in their lives.

Judaic Staff:

Rabbi Eliezer BenPorat was brought to Ottawa in 1988 to teach in Ottawa Torah Institute and was appointed by Rabbi Morgenstern (before the latter’s departure from the city) to become dean of both OTI and Machon Sarah in 1993. Besides his administrative and guidance duties, he has taught many subjects from the Judaic curriculum in an engaging and often unpredictable way.

Rabbi BenPorat was born and raised in Eretz Yisrael where he was educated in the yeshiva of Kfar Chassidim. He studied intensively in the kollelim of Gateshead, England and Lakewood, New Jersey. Before coming to Ottawa, Rabbi BenPorat taught in New York and Toronto. Besides his scholarly books, he has published extensively in various prestigious international journals of halachic research.

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In 1993, Rabbi Boruch Clinton was convinced to move to Ottawa from his hometown of Toronto.

Rabbi Clinton studied in the kollel of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Toronto and has published on a wide range of subjects, including a Torah guide to employment and a book of essays on the book of Shmuel.

Rabbi Clinton, who teaches at Machon Sarah each afternoon, spends his mornings teaching at OTI and his evenings involved in various publishing and educational activities (including weekly adult evening classes and extensive work for the important Jewish outreach effort, torah.org)..

Email Rabbi Clinton.

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Secular Staff:

Mr. Harry Corrin, himself a former (and current) teacher at OTI and Machon Sarah, is the Secular Director and Principal of Machon Sarah and Ottawa Torah Institute.

Mr. Corrin was born in the Isle of Man in the British Isles. He attended King George V School in Southport, England, and the Universities of Wales, Oxford, and Ottawa, accumulating a string of letters (B.A., Dip.Ed., M.A., M.Litt.).

Mr. Corrin progressed through the huge Carleton Board of Education (Ottawa-Nepean), as English teacher, department head, administrator, and senior examiner. He was an exchange consultant with the Caribbean Examinations Council in Barbados and the Joint Matriculation Examining Board in Manchester, England, and Director of Training for the Gordon Group of Ottawa. He was asked by Rabbi Ben-Porat to become Secular Director and Principal in May of 2002.

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Mr. Corrin ably leads a particularly talented and devoted staff of secular teachers – some of whom have been with us for more than a decade. All of our teachers are specialists in their subject areas. In the compulsory secular subjects, they have the minimum of a Bachelor's degree in their subject areas, and a Bachelor of Education degree (or its equivalent).