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OTS Newsletter - Spring 2007The Chana and Yaakov Tilles Campus:
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Beit midrash study programs with special emphasis on social responsibility |
Nestled in Jerusalem’s serene Talpiot neighborhood, Ohr Torah Stone’s
Chana and Yaakov Tilles Campus is the home of a quiet revolution: the exceptional development and growth of the
Midreshet Lindenbaum Women’s College and the Monica Dennis Goldberg School for Women
Advocates, Ohr Torah Stone’s groundbreaking initiatives for women. Day and night, the campus reverberates with the energy of hundreds of women seizing new opportunities through a wide range of innovative programs based on relevance and openness, fully committed to authentic Judaism and dedicated to the welfare of the State of Israel and the worldwide Jewish community.
Shachar and Tamar: Evolving to Promote Social Change
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Maria nd Joel Finkle |
Two landmark Midreshet Lindenbaum programs are enriching their formats in order to provide cutting-edge responses to needs and trends in contemporary Israeli society.
Beginning in September 2007, the Tushia program, which enables post-high school girls to pursue a year of Torah study prior to beginning their Sherut Leumi national service, will be known as
Tamar – the Hebrew acronym of Torah, mesima (challenge) and reut (friendship) – in order to reflect an emphasis the program will now be placing upon social responsibility. Inspired by the outstanding success of the Hadas program, which combines intense beit midrash study with service in the Israel Defense Forces, Tamar will offer a similar arrangement for young women seeking to merge their Torah study with non-army National Service.
“Participants will spend the year following high school studying in the beit midrash of Midreshet Lindenbaum,” explains Rabbi Ohad Tehar-Lev, director of the college’s Israeli programs. “But at the conclusion of their year of study, they will serve together as Sherut Leumi volunteers, making a real difference in an Israeli development town, in conjunction with the Bat Ami national service organization. Like the Hadas program, Tamar will provide them with educational and spiritual support in the form of weekly shiurim and discussions with teachers from the program, who will visit them on location.”
Young women seeking to dedicate a year to Torah study after either Sherut Leumi or IDF service will be able to find a highly meaningful experience in Shachar, a new expansion of the existing Tabam study program, also set to begin in September 2007. Building on the Ohr Torah Stone mission of working to improve society through the principles of Judaism,
Shachar – an acronym for Shinui Chevrati Ruchani (Spiritual Change in Society) that also means “daybreak” – will likewise be setting its focus on the pursuit of social justice. As in the Tabam program, participants will study Torah full-time. However, the study program will concentrate on the Jewish sources for topics such as poverty, the disabled in society and other relevant social issues. On the basis of their in-depth learning, participants will simultaneously develop and carry out a community service project, in cooperation with the Ma’aglei Tzedek organization for social justice.
Hadas: R & R for Dedicated Soldiers and Students
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All current participants in the Hadas program – those studying at Midreshet Lindenbaum and those now serving in the Israel Defense Forces – gathered for a day of learning and relaxation at the Kibbutz Lavie guest house on Chanukah. “We arranged leave for all of our soldiers and provided transportation to enable everyone to participate,” says director Rabbi Ohad Tehar-Lev. “Hadas teachers came to give shiurim and there were plenty of recreational activities that gave the women a chance to relax and spend time with each other.”
At present, there are 120 young women in the program, Tehar-Lev reports: 75 in active army service and 45 studying at Midreshet Lindenbaum. “Twenty women will be drafted into the IDF Education Corps close to Pesach time and the other 25 will join the Intelligence Corps in the summer,” he says, adding that the four Hadas soldiers who are pioneering the program’s option for serving in the General Security Services are doing very well in their positions.
As always, Hadas continues to produce soldiers who give their utmost to their country by becoming officers and signing on for additional army service. Seven Hadas soldiers who became officers are completing their duty in January. Another two are currently finishing the officers’ training course and two others are about to begin the course.
The Monica Dennis Goldberg School for
Women Advocates: Outstanding Statistics
Seventeen years have now passed since Ohr Torah Stone began training the world’s first female rabbinical court advocates. At the time, only men were allowed to take the qualifying exam and practice in the courts; it took an appellate-level lawsuit to change the eligibility requirements, followed by another protracted legal battle in order to remove the nearly insurmountable obstacles that were created specifically to prevent the women from passing the certification tests. Even once the first graduates won certification, they still faced discrimination, difficulties and even lockouts from certain rabbinical courts that continued to oppose the very idea of women advocates. Nonetheless, the courageous pioneers persisted and eventually proved themselves in the face of their initial detractors through the high quality of their work. Today, the
Monica Dennis Goldberg School for Women Advocates is an established, sought-after career choice for bright, motivated young women - and remains the only school of its kind in the world.
In January, first-year students from this groundbreaking program took a grueling, five-hour exam in Choshen Mishpat, one of the six tests on Jewish law that they must pass in order to qualify as advocates in Israel’s rabbinical courts. “On the average, 60% of our students pass this very difficult test the first time they take it, although last year our rate was 100%,” declares program director Nurit Fried. “In comparison, only 35% of male advocates in training succeed in passing these exams on their first attempt,” she says..
The Maria and Joel Finkle Overseas Program:
A Different Approach to Visiting Poland
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During school vacation right before the Pesach holiday, some 40 young women – half the students in
Midreshet Lindenbaum’s Maria and Joel Finkle Overseas Program – will participate in the school’s annual trip to Poland. Unlike many schools, whose Poland trips are planned and led by outside tour operators, the Finkle program furnishes all of its own educational programming,
with the one-week visit led entirely by its own staff members. “In addition to being far less expensive, running our own visit enables us to cover more ground and focus on the areas that are most meaningful to us,” explains Rabbi Shlomo Brown, director of the Midreshet Lindenbaum college, who has led numerous trips to Poland. “We devote a lot of time to learning about Jewish life in Poland before World War II, because in order to understand the destruction, you have to understand what life was like before.”
Brown adds that the intimate format of the trip makes it possible for individual students to explore their own family roots in Poland. “If a student wants to visit a particular town, we try to include it on our itinerary,” Brown says. “But if that’s not possible, we can arrange for her to go on her own for a half day, accompanied by a staff member.” Finkle Program director Tova Rhein describes accompanying one student on a detour to her grandfather’s hometown. “She was speaking with her grandfather by cell phone as we were walking, and he directed us the street and house he hadn’t seen for 50 years,” she recalls. “It was a very emotional experience.”
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Reconnecting Alumnae |
Educator Fellowships: Combining Theory and Practice
Since they began studying together in September 2006, the ten fellows in OTS’s new
Educator Fellowships Program have been focusing on practical application as they study Torah and pedagogy with an outstanding faculty of educators, in preparation for serving as teachers in Diaspora Jewish day schools. The fellows have already participated in four mini-courses on practical approaches to classroom instruction: the teaching methodology of Nechama Leibowitz, taught by Rabbi Stanley Peerless, author of To Study and to Teach: The Methodology of Nechama Leibowitz; the Revadim method of teaching mishnah and gemara, developed by course instructor Rabbi Pinchas Hayman and used by 35 North American day schools; approaches to teaching midrash, taught by Simi Peters who recently published a well-acclaimed book on the subject, and “Gemara Berurah,” a unique, computerized approach to teaching Talmud presented by one of the innovative program’s developers, Rachel Reinfeld-Wachtfogel.
Thanks to the cooperation between Midreshet Lindenbaum and the Melton Center of the Hebrew University, fellows can receive masters-level academic credit for Fellowship courses. Courses like “Issues in Jewish Education in the Diaspora” – developed and co-taught cooperatively by the faculties of the Melton Center and Midreshet Lindenbaum focus on topics such as psychological insights into Jewish identity development and its unique challenges for Orthodox educators. Blending knowledge from both the world of Jewish scholarship and the world of academic research, and integrating theory and practice, these courses reflect the uniqueness of the Educator Fellowships Program.
Darkaynu: More Integrated than Ever
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Two students from the Darkaynu program for developmentally
challenged young women read a chapter of Megillat Esther this year at
Midreshet Lindenbaum’s annual women’s megilla reading and Purim
celebration. Program director Elana Goldscheider reports that Darkaynu’s
15 students – including two in their third year and one in her fourth year
– are more integrated into the school than ever before, with some students
mainstreamed into regular classes, while others are “sidestreamed,”
studying in parallel classes and learning with chavruta study partners from
the overseas program.
This year, the program welcomed its first Hebrew-speaking student. “It’s
wonderful to see how she and the English speaking participants are able to communicate with each other,” Goldscheider says. “Darkaynu was created to enable developmentally challenged young women from overseas to spend a year in Israel after high school, just like their counterparts,” she continues. “Now we look forward to expanding our program to enable many young Israeli women with developmental disabilities to study in midrasha after high school, just like their counterparts in Israeli schools.”
Jewish Women’s Leadership Program:
A New Level of Scholarship and Guidance
The nine Torah scholars in Midreshet Lindenbaum’s new Jewish Women’s Leadership Program
are currently concentrating on the study of kashruth and have excelled on their first series of difficult tests in gemara and halacha. The three-year program is enabling women with broad backgrounds and skills in Talmud and Judaic studies to dedicate themselves to full-time study with the aim of creating a new model of Jewish communal leadership.
Participants in the program study the laws of Shabbat, family purity and kashruth on the same level – and in many cases, with the same teachers – as men in rabbinical seminaries. By the conclusion of their three-year term of study, however, the women will also have covered Talmudic and Jewish legal tracts and sources in the areas of conversion, mourning, faith, Hassidism and spirituality, Jewish life and subjects from the tractate Nashim, which specifically relates to women’s issues. Program participants, who share a commitment to serving the Jewish community, will be further enriched by leadership training in areas such as mediation, public speaking, psychology, sociology, public welfare and the pursuit of social justice.
Shani Taragin: Role Model, Teacher and Friend
in the Beit Midrash
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“The best relationships with students are established through teaching Torah,” says Shani Taragin, describing her work as rosh beit midrash – head of the study hall – at
Midreshet Lindenbaum. The new position provides the much-loved teacher with an official framework for doing what she does best: helping young women increase their Torah knowledge and develop their textual learning skills, and being available for discussions and personal consultation with every student in the overseas program.
“Students know that there’s someone they can talk to about their learning and religious development,” explains Taragin. “My goal is to help them with their avodat Hashem – their relationship with G-d.”
A soft-spoken dynamo, Taragin continues to teach numerous shiurim to the overseas students besides serving as a guiding presence in the beit midrash. In addition to her regular classes in Talmud, the weekly portion and the early prophets, she gives a weekly lesson to all overseas students that focuses on the development of Jewish law as it relates to various issues. “We are now learning sources about truth, tolerance and pluralism,” Taragin says. “This shiur gives the students an opportunity for in-depth learning of issues that are not necessarily covered in class.” She adds that while helping young women hone their textual skills, “the shiur gives me exposure to the entire student body.”
Taragin has regular weekly study sessions with students, either one-on-one or in small groups. She also teaches courses in the Israeli programs and the Educator Fellowships program, is involved in the recruitment and admissions process for the school, and works on developing Shabbat programming and special study days aimed at enhancing the general spiritual-educational atmosphere of the school. With such a full schedule – plus a family – when does she have time for herself? “I breathe between two and four in the morning,” she smiles.
