Neve was founded in 1970 by Rabbi Dovid Refson, the British-born alumnus of the
Gateshead Yeshiva and Yeshivas
Knesses Chizkiyahu. After his marriage, he entered the
kollel at the Harry Fischel Institute in Jerusalem and began delivering
shiurim to American students. Deciding to open his own
yeshiva, he placed an advertisement in
The Jerusalem Post and was surprised when three young women showed up. "I thought yeshivah meant for boys, but apparently, in some places, yeshivah can mean a girls' school as well", he said. The staff "adapted" to the new reality, and Neve was born. Soon after, Rabbi Moshe Chalkowski came on board as principal. Students began arriving at the school on the recommendation of Rabbi
Shlomo Freifeld, Rabbi
Shlomo Carlebach, and the
Chabad movement. The student body was older than Refson expected; while he was only 24 years old at the time, Neve's first students were in their late twenties and early thirties; some were as much as ten years his senior. In its early years, Neve was considered an unofficial sister school to the
Ohr Somayach yeshiva for
baal teshuva men in Jerusalem. First located in the
Bayit Vegan neighborhood of Jerusalem, Neve expanded in the 1970s with a Hebrew division, a preparatory school, and the one-year Shalhevet program. In the 1980s, Neve added a French division and the Machon Devorah seminary. The latter seminary has since been joined on campus by other seminaries designed for post-high-school women from religious backgrounds (see list below). According to Refson, the idea of adding seminaries to the
baalot teshuvah campus was meant to augment the girls' experience of Judaism, "creating a culture where
kashrus,
Shabbos and
tzniyus are taken for granted". == Curriculum ==