As Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, among them will be rabbis in some of the remotest corners of the globe who owe their training to a former pupil of Hasmonean School in London.
Now based in Jerusalem, Dayan Avraham Dadoun is on a mission to provide rabbinic training to serve the diaspora through the International Halacha Institute (IHI).
Its graduates are dispersed across the world, equipped with Torah, Halacha and the rabbinical wisdom accumulated over millennia.
They have the benefit of far more than educational guidance. Serving as the sole rabbi of a community can be extremely lonely. IHI provides access to mentors, senior dayanim and specialist advisers, giving rabbis practical communal guidance and connecting them to religious services and expertise that may not be available locally. The aim is that no rabbi should feel he is carrying his community alone.
Dadoun’s mission took a significant step forward this week with the official London launch of Adir International UK, a charity that supports the IHI.
After completing his A-levels at Hasmonean, Dadoun went to yeshiva in Gateshead before continuing in a kollel in Israel specialising in halacha under the auspices of Harav Mordechai Eliyahu zt”l.
He qualified first as a city rabbi and later trained as a dayan, completing the examinations of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
The rigour of the training he was given planted the seeds of an idea: to ensure a supply of expertly prepared rabbonim to serve the global kehila.
Dadoun tells the JC: “Positions of responsibility require structured education, assessment and continuing development.
“Rabbinical leadership carries an extraordinary responsibility for people’s lives, families and communities. It deserves the same commitment to rigorous training and continued professional growth.”
His plans were also informed by his experiences in further training and studies to become a dayan.
“I was only 32 at the time, and the dayan sitting beside me was 78,” he recalled. “I had enormous respect for his experience, but the 46-year age difference brought home to me how few younger dayanim were being trained to serve diaspora communities.”
Israel’s Chief Rabbinate operates a formal examination system through which candidates can progress through rabbinic qualifications and advanced dayanus examinations.
Outside Israel, the path was far less straightforward.
“Anyone seeking that level of training would generally need to come to Israel and learn for many years. By then, he would often have established his home and family in Israel. Asking him afterwards to return abroad, perhaps for a part-time communal position, was neither simple nor sustainable.”
Dadoun soon concluded that the community’s needs went beyond producing new dayanim. Serving rabbis also needed a way to continue developing their halachic knowledge throughout their careers.
“Many talented young men spend several years learning in Israel before entering the rabbinate,” he said. “But those initial years cannot prepare a rabbi for every question he will face over an entire career.”
The idea that became IHI began on the smallest possible scale: with one friend.
“He asked me to tell him what to learn and to give him monthly examinations,” Dadoun said.
Six months later, the friend was accepted to study medicine and wondered whether he would have to abandon his halachic studies.
Dadoun told him he can do both after receiving a ruling from Rav Asher Weiss.
During Covid, the friend continued studying halacha alongside medicine, with Dadoun designing a bespoke timetable around his medical course. When medical exams approached, the halachic workload decreased; when he had more time, it increased.
Within four years, he had completed his medical degree while also undertaking a substantial programme of halachic study and receiving semicha in the laws of Shabbat. “I thought: if one person can do this successfully, why can’t we replicate the system?”
That became the basis of IHI’s model. Rather than imposing an identical programme on every student, it assesses a candidate’s previous learning, ability, responsibilities, available time and ultimate objective.
“We then create what I call a GPS: a structured route showing him what to study each week, the examinations he will take and the stages through which he will progress towards his goal.”
The approach began attracting interest from kollelim outside Israel, whose roshei kollel were often juggling teaching with fundraising, administration and communal responsibilities.
IHI began supplying curricula, examinations, specialist shiurim and access to recognised experts in different areas of halacha.
The model subsequently attracted communities in Miami, which approached Dadoun about whether it could be extended to the training of dayanim. That relationship eventually led to the establishment of Bet Din Bet Yosef in South Florida, where Dadoun serves as Av Bet Din, bringing together more than 20 communities.
For Dadoun, the aim is to develop religious leadership from within diaspora communities.
“Local rabbis and dayanim understand their country, language, culture and communal realities,” he said. “Our role is to help develop those leaders and support them with access to specialist expertise in Israel.
“That is the model: strong local leadership, backed by an international network of specialist knowledge.”
His wife, Efrat, has been integral to the project and serves as chief operating officer. She holds a master’s degree in educational systems management and has a background in education and organisational leadership.
Dayan Dadoun with his wife Efrat (Credit: DS Productions)[Missing Credit]
Around three years ago, IHI partnered with the Conference of European Rabbis to develop further training for rabbis across Europe and worldwide with Olami.
It has now worked with more than 240 rabbis and rabbinical students across 86 communities, recording more than 135 programme completions. Participants have come from the United States, Europe, South America, South Africa and Australia.
Programmes range from community rabbinics to specialist qualifications in areas including safrut STaM – the writing of Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot – chuppah and kiddushin, and ribbit, the Jewish laws governing interest.
Dadoun stresses that dayanus is a distinct and substantially more advanced path, requiring extensive prior learning and specialist study in areas including marriage and divorce, personal status and monetary law.
“Our purpose is to ensure that each person is properly prepared for the particular responsibility he carries – and, crucially, that he understands both his authority and its limits.”
IHI is also developing a specialist programme for Orthodox military chaplains across the diaspora.
The idea emerged after Dadoun met military chaplains at a Conference of European Rabbis gathering and began considering how the sophisticated halachic expertise developed within the IDF Military Rabbinate could be adapted for Jewish chaplains serving in other countries.
That led to work with The Aleph Institute in the US which supports Jewish military personnel and chaplains worldwide.
The programme is intended both for serving chaplains and those considering military chaplaincy.
Dadoun is careful to stress that rulings developed for the Israeli military cannot simply be transplanted elsewhere.
“The underlying Torah must be studied carefully and applied with an understanding of the different legal, military and cultural context,” he said.
Another central strand of IHI’s work is continuing support for rabbis already serving communities.
Dadoun points to a rabbi in South Africa responsible for a community of around 200 families. Through IHI, he follows a personal programme of study, attends a weekly shiur and has direct access to a dayan familiar with him and his community. IHI is deliberately not defined as Sephardi or Ashkenazi and works with Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Chabad and other communities, subject to its entry requirements.
The qualifications are based on defined curricula, rigorous examinations and, where relevant, supervised practical training.
Dayan Dadoun (right) with Adir trustee Isaac Jebreel (Credit: DS Productions)[Missing Credit]
Its certificates are signed by leading IHI dayanim and by Maran Harav Shlomo Moshe Amar, the former Rishon LeZion and Nasi of IHI, and its programmes operate with strong rabbinical backing.
Dadoun describes his approach as combining “the discipline of formal education with the depth and seriousness of traditional halachic study”.
And he believes the model works precisely because it connects two worlds.
“Israel contains an extraordinary concentration of Torah scholarship,” he said. “But transferring that knowledge effectively to diaspora communities is not straightforward.”
A leading scholar in Israel may not speak the language or understand the cultural realities of a particular diaspora community, while a local rabbi may understand those realities intimately but lack access to highly specialised halachic expertise.
“Because I have lived and worked between Israel and chutz la’aretz, I understand both the depth of expertise available in Israel and the practical needs of diaspora communities. IHI was created to build that connection.”
The organisation’s next major project is the International Beit Midrash, a global Torah platform through which questions can be directed to appropriate specialists and answered in several languages.
Dadoun sees it as a modern expression of the words of Yeshayahu: “Ki miTzion tetzei Torah, udvar Hashem miYerushalayim” – “For Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem.”
There is also a possible future initiative to provide specialist training and ongoing support for university chaplains.
Hundreds of rabbis and students have already passed through IHI programmes, but Dadoun believes the work has barely begun.
“People sometimes ask what we will do when everyone is qualified,” he said. “My answer is: we are nowhere near finished.”
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