Editor's note, Part 6: In a nine-day series of stories, NJ Advance Media is taking a closer look at Lakewood, one of New Jersey's fastest-growing and most complex towns. Lakewood is home to a huge Orthodox Jewish community and the rapid growth has engulfed the town, igniting tensions between the religious and secular societies on many levels. Each day, we will explore some of the major issues in the community, including the welfare fraud investigation, housing problems and the strains on the education system.

LAKEWOOD -- It's the institution that now defines Lakewood.

In 1943, Rabbi Aaron Kotler, a famed Jewish scholar, established Beth Medrash Govoha, propelling the transformation of a once-posh lakeside resort town into a bustling metropolis for segments of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Today, Beth Medrash Govoha, more commonly called BMG, is America's largest yeshiva, or Jewish college. A world-wide attraction, it's described by its students in the way other teens might describe Princeton or Yale. Prestigious. Elite. Their definitive No. 1 choice.

"It is the centerpiece and crowning glory of Jewish life in Lakewood," said Ali Botein-Furrevig, an Ocean County College professor who wrote a book about the township's Jewish community.

Yet to many outsiders, BMG remains an enigma as misunderstood as Lakewood's Jewish community itself.

It has no website. It enrolls men only. And, because BMG has no traditional freshman students, it reports no graduation rate or job placement data to the federal government, though it receives millions in government grants for low-income students.

The campus, a series of buildings nestled throughout a residential area, is crawling with men in dark suits and wide-brimmed hats, their mission often misunderstood. Are they there to become rabbis? To read the Torah? What do they do after graduation?

"We all see misconceptions," said Naftali Kunstlinger, a 2003 BMG graduate who lives in Lakewood and has a law firm downtown. "But some of them are too silly to be addressed, to be quite frank."

To truly understand Lakewood, you must first understand BMG. And to understand BMG, you have to go inside.

Preserving a tradition

A student walks past one one Beth Medrash Govoha's academic buildings in Lakewood. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Singing. That's the first thing visitors hear when a pair of first-floor classroom doors swing open at BMG.

The gymnasium-sized study hall is packed with more than 500 students, young men each dressed in white button-down shirts, black pants, black belts and black shoes. They sit in rows of black banquet-hall style chairs and lean over the brown wooden podiums holding their thick books.

In a scene unlike any traditional college class, the ornate podium at the front of the room is vacant, with no professor in sight. Some students rock back and forth -- and back and forth and back and forth -- in their chairs. Others stand, their heads sticking out among the sea of white shirts.

Animated facial expressions and hand gestures are exchanged between students, deep in discussion with one another. And the singing. It cuts through the continuous hum of deliberation and debate.

The song emanates from a single student sitting near the doorway, his words and language unrecognizable to visitors. It's all part of the process of studying the Talmud, a school official said.

A classroom inside Beth Medrash Govoha. Students spend much of the day in large study sessions. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

The Talmud, which offers commentary on the Torah, or Hebrew bible, is the reason why each of BMG's more than 6,500 undergraduate and graduate students -- all men because genders are commonly separated in Orthodox Jewish schools -- are enrolled.

Studying the Talmud, a collection of writings on Jewish laws and traditions, is a key to preserving the Jewish customs so revered in the Orthodox community. At BMG, where undergraduate tuition is just under $20,000 a year, there are no other majors or classes except Talmudic study, which is offered six day a week.

Beginning around 9:30 a.m., students spend most of their day in giant study sessions with as many as 1,000 students. They work with a partner to study the Talmud and debate and dissect its meaning, a task that often stretches late into the evening, including a session that starts at 8:40 p.m. and goes, as one student put it, "until you drop."

"There are no weekends here. There are no Sundays off," said Haim Toledano, 22, a baby-faced Parisian who enrolled at BMG last fall. "You are studying the Talmud from morning to basically the nights."

Originally written in ancient Aramaic, the Talmud has sections written throughout history, 2,000 years ago, 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago.

"It's not easy reading. It doesn't just flow like there's a story and storyline that goes natural to the other," said Yaakov Friedman, a part-time professor at BMG. "You've gotta mesh it all together. It's work."

Hats and cell phones line the hallway outside of a classroom at Beth Medrash Govoha. Many students carry flip phones without internet access and leave them outside the classroom to avoid distractions. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Though the sticker price for BMG undergraduates is $19,876, plus another $4,172 for room and board, many students receive scholarships or other financial aid, according to school officials.

About 70 percent of BMG's undergraduate students receive federal Pell grants for low-income students, netting more than $8 million a year for the yeshiva, according to federal data.

Some students at BMG, where men start classes around age 21, plan to complete a degree at a secular college in the future. But the time spent studying the Talmud, a process that sharpens analytical and debate skills, is invaluable, former students said.

"It's not just about the study that you did," said Moshe Bender, who lives in Lakewood and earned a bachelor's degree in Talmudic studies from BMG in 2013 followed by a master's degree in 2015. "It's about the being of the person, what it does to you, how you are kind of made up. It just makes us into a better person, that our whole being is on a higher level."

Such devotion is what Rabbi Kotler imagined when he brought BMG to Lakewood at the request of a local hotel owner, according to his family.

A luminary among Jewish scholars, Kotler was so well regarded that Jewish leaders in America orchestrated his escape from the Nazis in Lithuania, where the Jewish people were nearly obliterated during the Holocaust.

In a converted mansion in Lakewood, Kotler resumed the type of lectures -- no-holds barred intellectual battlegrounds -- that distinguished him in the Jewish community, explained Kotler's grandson Aaron, BMG's president and key leader in the Lakewood Jewish community.

"His life was about the preservation of a tradition, and it was really about community," the younger Kotler said. "He saw beauty in the European Jewish life and he wanted to carry over the value of that."

Misconceptions

Rabbi Aaron Kotler, president of Beth Medrash Govoha, is also a key leader in Lakewood's Jewish community. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

These days, Aaron Kotler has a favorite joke he likes to tell (yes, jokes are permitted at BMG).

"If you go into the ShopRite in Howell, you will hear 'Rabbi Goldstein, cleanup on aisle, 7,'" Kotler said with a smile.

"Rabbi" is a common courtesy title in some Orthodox communities, like mister or sir, but the popular misconception is that every student who goes to BMG is there to become a rabbi, Kotler said.

In reality, about five percent of BMG graduates become pulpit rabbis or hold other religious positions, while many BMG graduates go on to work in business, law, healthcare or other professions in the Lakewood community, Kotler said.

Several recent graduates interviewed said they are in law school at top colleges, including Columbia University, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania. The intense style of Talmudic studies at BMG gives them an edge on their classmates, they said.

Many alumni, like 44-year-old Mark Berkowitz, return to campus often so they don't stray from their studies. Berkowitz, a 2001 graduate, attends an ethics class with one of the BMG deans every Sunday evening, he said.

"I still come back here to make sure that I don't lose that connection and I keep myself on the straight and narrow," said Berkowtiz, who runs a community health center in Lakewood.

But study of the Talmud after graduation is what leads to one of the other major misconception about BMG: That its students dedicate their entire life to studying the Talmud and never leave campus or hold a job.

There are some students who do that, Kotler said. But most others carve out time in their professional lives to continue studying, so, in a sense, they are committed to lifelong Talmudic study.

"For my grandfather, the thought that a student would stop study after he graduated was a failure," Kotler said. "Even if that student would be a great rabbi or a great lawyer or a great physician or judge or great businessman."

About 57 percent of BMG's students graduated within seven years of beginning the five-year undergraduate program, according to the most recent data, the yeshiva said. The prior year, its seven-year graduation rate was 65 percent.

The average stay at the school is six years, Kotler said.

Shaping Lakewood

Students inside a library at Beth Medrash Govoha. The yeshiva has played a major role in the growing Jewish population in Lakewood. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

In some ways, BMG, and criticisms of the yeshiva's growth and pursuit of public money, are a microcosm of the Lakewood Jewish community.

BMG's enrollment has boomed from 2,027 students in 1996 to more than 6,500 this year, a direct factor in the township's population growth because many students get married and have children while studying. In 2012, the yeshiva estimated that its students and alumni comprised 64 percent of Lakewood's 13,780 married couples.

Lakewood residents outside of the Jewish community have said the exploding Jewish population escalates problems with over-development, transportation and a cash-strapped public school district.

Kotler, however, insisted growth is not an objective for the yeshiva and wouldn't speculate on whether enrollment will continue to surge.

"If size were to be an obstacle to quality, then size gets rejected," Kotler said. "If size has an advantage, if it can be in support of quality, then we want to look at size and say, 'OK, how can we leverage that to become even stronger?'"

Last year, a state appeals court ruled BMG could not receive a $10.6 million state grant it had been awarded for a new library and academic center because the money would have been used for religious instruction.

The yeshiva was awarded the grant in 2013 after Kotler accompanied Gov. Chris Christie on a trip to Israel a year before, he and other Jewish leaders endorsed Christie's re-election bid and the yeshiva hired a leading lobbyist to make its case to lawmakers.

But The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey sued to stop the grant, saying taxpayers shouldn't foot the bill for supporting religious education.

Around the same time BMG was lobbying for the state grant, an article in The Forward, a Jewish news publication, raised questions about students at religious colleges, including BMG, receiving federal Pell grants, money aimed at helping low-income students improve career prospects.

School officials have combated criticism of efforts to secure public money by saying BMG students excel in areas outside of Talmudic studies and contribute to New Jersey's economy. BMG is accredited by the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools, and many other religious schools nationwide receive Pell grants as well.

"It's not up to me," Kotler said when asked about BMG students receiving Pell grants. "It's federal law."

While outsiders may perceive a town of tension and turmoil, Kotler, born in Manhattan and raised in Lakewood, sees something different, he said.

He sees a community of families, young and old, where people know each other and help each other. He sees a preservation of tradition, his grandfather's vision come to pass.

"This was the mission of his life," Kotler said. "What could be more beautiful?"

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.