Yerushalayim Fitness Training Course for Yeshiva Bochurim and Yungeleit

In the evening hours, as their friends are still leaning over the Gemara, they leave the yeshiva and replace their hats and suits with sportswear. They enter the gym and engage in lifting weights and pedaling.

They are 24 yeshiva bochurim taking part in a first-of-its-kind course, which will eventually make them gym trainers.

The course was initiated by the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry in a bid to help members of the chareidi community integrate into the workforce. Gideon Zaken, head of the ministry’s Yerushalayim district, recently approached the Buot center, which specializes in training charedim in swimming and water therapy professions and asked for a workplace to train charedim.

The center’s CEO, Zvika Hendels, came up with an idea: “In the past few years, more and more charedim are becoming interested in health and fitness, so why not have haredi fitness instructions?”

The ministry’s professional training department adopted the idea and even decided to subsidize the course. The charedi students, who come from different communities in Israel, are aged 20 to 38. The course lasts nine months, and when it ends they will receive a gym operator’s certificate. The course’s lessons have been made kosher and are approved by rabbonim.

One of the students is Dovid Schwartzbaum, 30, who is married with two children and studies at the Mir Yeshiva in Beit Shemesh. “I have always been interested in health,” he says. “I spend half the day at the yeshiva and half the day at the gym. It makes me feel good, and it’s healthy.”

{Ynet/Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel}

7 Responses to “Yerushalayim Fitness Training Course for Yeshiva Bochurim and Yungeleit”