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A non-denominational yeshiva opens in Scotland, inspired by models in US and Israel
(JTA) — The students start their day with prayers at 8 a.m., then work their way through a packed schedule of rigorous Jewish text study. Hailing from several countries, they are of different genders, practice Judaism differently and identify with a variety of movements, or none at all. Some of the cohort of 18 aim to become rabbis, but others are devoting themselves to Jewish learning as a side pursuit.
Such programs have existed for more than a decade but this one, called Azara, is perhaps Europe’s first non-denominational yeshiva. The founders of Azara, which is based for the summer in Edinburgh, hope to offer a pluralist space for intensive study of Talmud and other holy books, drawing from models pioneered in New York City, Jerusalem and elsewhere.
“We just thought there’s so much need in the U.K. for a bit more education, something that goes a little bit deeper, something that’s accessible, something that’s open to people,” said Jessica Spencer, a fifth-year rabbinical student at Hebrew College originally from Edinburgh and one of Azara’s founders.
“The real thing we’ve been building towards is the summer program because that feels [like] quite the symbolic thing; to have something of this sort of weight, and full-time, this depth that’s not in America or Israel,” she added.
The opening of Azara signifies that a growing network of institutions committed to non-denominational Jewish study now has a foothold in a new continent. Yeshivas such as the egalitarian Hadar in New York City, or Pardes in Jerusalem, have sought to offer a traditional curriculum of all-day intellectual Jewish text study while maintaining a commitment to strict Jewish observance, mixed-gender learning and inclusion of LGBTQ Jews.
Azara received funding from Hadar and credits it and Pardes as influences, along with Svara, a Chicago-based yeshiva founded to serve LGBTQ Jews. Azara shies away from the label “egalitarian” because some of its students and faculty identify as Orthodox. But people of all genders study together and morning prayers at the yeshiva have been gender-equal. (There is also a small Orthodox group that prays together, but without the quorum of 10 men traditionally required by Jewish law.)
“We’re trying to combine aspects of all of these places because none of them exist in the U.K. really,” said Spencer, who plans to work for Britain’s Masorti movement, a parallel to the Conservative movement, after she receives ordination. “There’s a real need to do something that all those places are doing — to be cross-communal in the way that Pardes is and open to people and do the sort of empowering, joyful learning that Svara does, and also the kind of serious and rigorous element that I’ve seen at Hadar.”
Spencer credits the Open Talmud Project, a cross-denominational study program founded in 2009, for introducing her to the code of rabbinic law. Azara is the successor to that and another initiative, called Pop-Up Beit Midrash, that was based in London and offered a variety of Jewish classes and courses.
Spencer founded Azara last year along with Orthodox Rabba Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz and Rabbi Leah Jordan of the Liberal movement, which is similar to Reform Judaism in the United States. The three scholars began by offering Zoom classes, weekend programs and intensives, and drop-in evening classes at JW3, a Jewish community center in London.
Participants in chevruta, or partnered study, are shown during Azara’s summer orientation. (Ben Schwaub)
For their summer yeshiva, however, they decided to decamp to the University of Edinburgh’s divinity school, where students are staying in campus accommodations and eat kosher, vegetarian food brought in from Glasgow, about an hour away by car. Spencer hopes locating the school in a city with a small Jewish population will allow the students to bond and focus on their learning.
“We thought it kind of helped the atmosphere of the program and it would create a more immersive community,” she said. “In London, people would have been scattered all over the city and they would have had their everyday lives, they wouldn’t have been so focused on the program.”
Participants in the summer program will spend the month studying Jewish law, modern Jewish thought and other Jewish topics, reading and analyzing the texts in small groups in the original Hebrew and Aramaic. The day begins with prayers and breakfast, followed by a three-hour morning Talmud class. All students are studying the same chapter of Kiddushin, a Talmud tractate that deals with engagement and marriage. Beginners are learning to read the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts, and more advanced students are studying commentaries on the Talmud. All official programming is Shabbat- and kosher-observant.
The faculty at Azara include scholars from Hadar, Pardes, the Progressive Leo Baeck College in London and Yeshivat Maharat, a liberal Orthodox seminary that ordains women clergy in New York City.
“Azara is giving access to deep Torah learning to a whole group of people who have never had the opportunity,” said Jeremy Tabick, a member of the Hadar faculty who is British and is teaching Talmud at Azara this summer. “It’s inspiring to watch such committed and excited participants throw themselves into a month-long experience.”
The fact that all three founders of the yeshiva are women, Spencer said, “was a little bit chance,” noting that several male rabbis in Britain have also long been committed to building a program of this kind.
“We’re still in a world where there are fewer opportunities for women learning than men, by a long way for this stuff,” she added. “And so perhaps women have somewhat more impetus to create non-traditional places to learn and create accessible places to learn, but really, I think, again, I can think of several men off the top of my head who’ve been very, very involved in this project at various other points.”
Another of Azara’s co-founders, Taylor-Guthartz, has experience with breaking boundaries in Britain’s Jewish community. After she received ordination at Yeshivat Maharat, she was briefly fired from a teaching position at the London School of Jewish Studies, causing a communal stir that led to a reversal of that decision.
“It may take an age – it may even take more than my lifetime — but you’ve got to keep moving,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2021, regarding effecting change in British Jewish institutions. ”You’ve got to keep coming. I think we’re at the beginning of that process.”
To pay for its programming, Spencer said Azara is mostly funded by donations, including grants from Hadar (which is also paying Tabick’s salary for the month), Hazon’s Jewish Intentional Communities Incubator and the Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Tuition for the summer program was flexible, with tiered suggestions for participants ranging from roughly $450 to $1,600.
The yeshiva is also holding study sessions with the wider Edinburgh Jewish community. At the last one, on July 5, students led an arts-and-crafts session on text related to the minor fast day of the 17th of Tammuz, which occurred July 6. Another student did a reading that placed a Sylvia Plath poem in conversation with Eshet Hayil, the Biblical poem about a “woman of valor” traditionally sung on Friday nights.
Spencer is co-teaching a Talmud class with Laliv Clenman, a professor from Leo Baeck College who specializes in rabbinics, Hebrew and Aramaic. Spencer said the amount that the students have learned in just a week and a half has been “incredible.”
“We’re talking about people who came in being a little shaky on their vowels, some of them, and not knowing that a [Hebrew letter] ‘vav’ means ‘and’ and really that level — very, very beginner,” she said. “And they’re reading lines of Gemara,” or Talmud.
She added, “It feels like we’re doing something very special.”
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The post A non-denominational yeshiva opens in Scotland, inspired by models in US and Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.