Yeshiva ישיבה

The word means simply "sitting": the sages sit before the master, and the aggadah finds yeshivot with the patriarchs already. The historical chain runs from the "vineyard at Yavneh" through the academies of Sura and Pumbedita—with their kallah months, when thousands gathered to work through a tractate—to the yeshivot of Spain, France and Poland.

Its present shape was set by Volozhin: learning as one's whole occupation, chavruta pairs, a page of Gemara with the Rishonim. From there came the Lithuanian yeshivot and their heirs after the Shoah in Israel and America. The yeshiva is the world's one school without graduation: no one finishes it—one sits in it.