Rabbi Paul Terman is one of the WebYeshiva.org’s first recipients of semicha. Born in California, he grew up in Florida and it was during his time at the University of Miami where he became increasingly interested in Jewish observance.
“Jewishly I was only armed with a basic Sunday Hebrew School education, but while I was at university I found myself yearning for more knowledge. I found myself endlessly asking campus rabbis questions and growing in my observance. I found value in learning Torah as a means of connecting to God, as catching a glimmer of the Divine,” Rabbi Terman explained.
Although he found the campus rabbis knowledgeable he also found himself yearning for a greater understanding of the Torah and what it means to be a Jew.
“Naturally, this brought me to Rabbi Chaim Brovender’s Yeshivat Hamivtar and where learning how to learn was essentially their motto,” he said. “I found myself drawn especially to learning halacha, its foundations and the processes by which it is derived. The legal structure and the logical foundations of halacha fueled my ability and desire to study it.”
After moving back to the US in order to pursue a PhD in Physics from Texas A&M University he began learning at WebYeshiva.org which seemed a fitting extension of the kind of learning he had done at Hamivtar, as the WebYeshiva staff included several Hamivtar rabbis.
Eventually, he joined the Halacha Mastery Program.
“The Halacha Mastery Program seemed to be the culmination of much of my previous learning and desires for growth which included understanding many of the details of halacha and the processes by which we arrive at it, and furthering my foundation to allow for truly independent study,” Rabbi Terman said.
Rabbi Terman lives with his wife in New haven Connecticut. He has a BA in History and BS in Physics and Mathematics. A researcher of dark matter, he is currently working on an experiment looking for a specific type of dark matter called LUX.