The goal of a school for baalei teshuva should not be an "introduction to limud HaTorah" unless the BT has already been introduced to concepts of faith and to the life of mitzvos. Ours is not a religion of studying alone. “The sum of the matter, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the entire man." (Ecclesiastes 12:13) The Vilna Gaon said, “Just as the prime purpose of a tree is its fruit, so is the study of Torah secondary to its fulfillment. Only the fulfillment of mitzvos qualifies a man as one of the righteous upon whom the world depends.” (Even Sheleimah 5:6)
The average frum from birth yeshiva man grew up with mitzvos. He started slowly and gradually over his youth took them on. Now he focuses on Gemara learning. Too often, usually, the BT yeshiva rabbi sees a 25-year-old Jewish man and says, well at 25 I focused all day long on Gemara so that's what I'll tell this BT to do. Isn't that what 25 year old Jewish men are supposed to do? Well, no it isn't, not in this case because that would constitute skipping over the 20 years of chinuch that the rabbi got prior to his focus on Gemara learning. The typical guy who walks into a BT yeshiva or gal who walks into a seminary may have committed him or herself to the religious life but probably knows very little about Hashem and very little about mitzvos. As Rabbi Avigdor Miller said, "You can't have yiras shemayim without shemayim." You have teach about God. And you have to teach about mitzvos because God commands us to do them as we see on every page of Chumash. Teaching it is a very tricky business, because this person is an adult and a child at the same time. You can't just give him candies and simple explanations. But you can't overwhelm him either. With that said, I looked over your schedule. Some good variety there. Duties of the Heart, Tanya, Mishnayos, Bitachon, and Hebrew. It is essential to teach the Hebrew language and grammar, not via titching but actual classes in grammar. You appear to be doing that. Very good. However, you need classes in halacha and mitzvos. If you teach people about hell but don't show how halacha works, they are going to be afraid of their own shadows. They'll tremble at the thought that they might breath in molecules of chometz during Pesach as they sit in the Beis Midrash. One can't live like that, in terror, and many have stopped being religious because they weren't taught how to approach the halacha. I'm not talking about a shiur where the Mishneh Breruah is read to them. Rather, it must be topical, a discussion of various topics in halacha with an emphasis on the practical as well as how halacha works. What is chumrah? What is heter? What do we do with different opinions? What is minhag? What are poskim? How do we get from Chumash, to Gemara, to Shulchan Aruch, to contemporary poskim? Also, night seder should be optional. You can't go from smart phones and bacon to sitting all day and night in the beis midrash. It's too much. People crack up from being overwhelmed. I have witnessed this with my own eyes many times! Is your Gemara shiur two hours long or is it part shiur part prep and review? A two hour shiur is way too much for BTs. I hope also that your yeshiva doesn't disparage the outside world day and night, calling everything narishkite. That also makes people crack up. Focus on the positive. If a guy played baseball his whole life you can't tell him baseball is narishkite. If he worked hard to get into college you can't disparage colleges wholesale. Some criticisms are Ok but only some. Be positive. It should go without saying, that nobody should be disparaging Chassidus or Modern Orthodoxy. "Educate the lad according to his way." For most BTs, Modern Orthodoxy is the most sensible path, even if some of it offends the sensibilities of the Rosh Yeshiva. Certainly, nobody should be discouraged from becoming Chassidic, even Chabad. I know people who were discouraged from being Chabad at the BT program at your school and they suffered terribly in their lives from having being pushed off the path that was right for them. How do I know all this? How do I dare to offer my view? Because I am a BT of many years and I know so many casualties, so many ruined lives. All my fingers and toes are not enough to count them all. And every one of them got ruined in a school for BTs. They walk out of the yeshiva and you have no idea what happened to them. You focus on the new guy. Well, I know these people, have visited them in their basement apartments, watched them eating on Yom Kippur. It didn't have to happen. They were mishandled in almost every case. I was mishandled too by so many people. When I told one Rosh Yeshiva that I needed to get a job (at age 30!) because I needed to buy health insurance, he told me that I didn't need health insurance. If I got sick the community would take care of me. Well, I got sick and the community didn't take care of me. A rabbi at my yeshiva told me I couldn't get a job working 1/2 a day cleaning a shul next door because it would interrupt my Torah study. He even cited the story of Rabbi Akiva and his return home to visit his wife. Meanwhile, the yeshiva was not feeding us, and I had no money for shiduchim. I also didn't own a blanket even though I lived in the New York area with its blistering winters. Meanwhile this rabbi lived in a big house with an indoor succah! These are two of a hundred stories I could tell you of MY experiences with very foolish rabbis at BT schools. I leave you with advice from Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky zt'l. He said that the goal of the outreach person should be simply to help the newcomer take on the commandments (aka the mitzvos/religious practices). Before you didn’t observe them. Now you do. That’s the major change. The outreach person should not impose conformity or eradicate the essence of the person. Rabbi Kamenetsky said that it is important for the newcomer to feel normal. He said that, for example, the typical newcomer will not feel normal if he does not complete his or her college education. Thus, he or she should not be discouraged from doing so. The implications of his advice are vast. May you be blessed.
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