More than twenty years ago, the Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva of Queens, New York supplied the core Judaic staff for the brand new Ottawa yeshiva, Ottawa Torah Institute. Rabbi Yisroel Morgenstern and his colleagues, along with a devoted cadre of local parents and supporters, created an institution in which Jewish boys could claim their rightful Torah inheritance.
Many dozens of graduates, now enthusiastically living Torah lives in communities around the world, attest to the yeshiva’s success. The boys of OTI have earned a remarkable reputation in some of the best post high school yeshivos in Israel and North America. Nevertheless, their strong sense of loyalty to each other and to their home town is constantly on display.
Who We Are
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 High School for Girls 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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Rabbi Boruch Clinton has taught at OTI Since 1993, when he left the kollel of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Toronto. He has published a Torah guide to employment and a book of essays on the book of Shmuel - which you can read online here.
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)
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. To our great fortune, he accepted.
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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).
