Chaim Brovender

Chaim Brovender (born 1941) is an Israeli Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist rabbi.

Rabbi Chaim Brovender was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. He attended Flatbush Yeshiva, a coeducational modern Orthodox day school. He later graduated from Yeshiva University, where he earned a BA in mathematics and received rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. In 1965 he and his wife made aliya and settled in Jerusalem. Brovender later completed a doctorate in Semitic languages from the Hebrew University.

In 1967, on the advice of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Brovender founded Hartman College, in Romema, Jerusalem (under the aegis of the Israel Torah Research Institute). Its purpose was to serve as a Yeshiva for American students who wanted to study in Israel. In 1976, Rabbi Brovender founded Yeshivat HaMivtar in French Hill, Jerusalem. Brovender successfully ran the Yeshiva alone, until 1985, when he merged it with the network of educational institutions founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin called Ohr Torah Stone.

In 1976 Brovender established Midreshet Lindenbaum, originally named Michlelet Bruria, as the woman's component of Yeshivat Hamivtar.

In October 2000, Brovender was beaten by Palestinian police and protesters. At the time, he was the head of the Yeshivat Hamivtar yeshiva in the Israeli settlement of Efrat, and was driving from the yeshiva to his home in Jerusalem when he drove past a Palestinian village to bypass a road closed by recent unrest, and was pulled over by Palestinian police. Palestinian security forces managed to extract him from the scene after about an hour and hand him over to Israeli troops. His vehicle was destroyed by the Palestinian mob.

In 2007 he launched WebYeshiva, the first online interactive internet yeshiva. The Web Yeshiva is headquartered on HaNassi St., in Jerusalem. The purpose of the project was to draw on the large resource of quality teachers, and high levels of study and knowledge to be found in Jerusalem. With the current computer technologies the Yeshiva is able to offer classes around the clock with these teachers and bring them to the entire world via the web.