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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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France Set to Recognize Palestinian State Despite Majority of Citizens Opposing the Move, New Survey Shows
French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool
More than 70 percent of the French people oppose President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly next week, according to a new study that highlights strong public opposition to the contentious diplomatic move.
A survey conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) on behalf of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, found that only 29 percent of French citizens support Macron’s initiative.
On Monday, France is expected to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in New York, with a handful of other Western countries — including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia — poised to follow suit.
However, the majority of the French people oppose the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, with 71 percent rejecting any recognition before the release of all remaining Israeli hostages still held in Gaza and the surrender of Hamas, according to the newly released survey.
Le Crif publie aujourd’hui un sondage réalisé par l’Ifop sur le thème : « Reconnaissance d’un État palestinien et antisémitisme : le regard des Français ».
71 % des Français rejettent une reconnaissance avant la libération des otages et la reddition du Hamas. Seuls 29 % des… pic.twitter.com/sCjqNUkz4t
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) September 18, 2025
The study also examined how this diplomatic initiative and the ongoing war in Gaza have fueled the ongoing surge of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment across France.
Nearly 70 percent of the French people view antisemitic incidents as a serious threat, not only to French Jews but to the society as a whole, the survey found.
Meanwhile, according to the data, 19 percent of French citizens consider it acceptable to target Jews due to the conflict in Gaza, with the figure rising to 31 percent among those aged 18 to 24.
France has faced sharp criticism from Israeli and US officials who oppose recognizing a Palestinian state, warning that such a move would only reward terrorism, hinder Gaza ceasefire negotiations, and embolden Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that has ruled the enclave for nearly two decades.
Israel is reportedly considering multiple retaliatory measures in response to Macron’s move, including accelerating West Bank annexations, closing the French consulate in Jerusalem, and seizing French-owned sites in Israel, such as the Sanctuary of the Eleona — a Christian pilgrimage destination.
For his part, Macron has pushed back against criticism of France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, arguing that it is a necessary step to counter Hamas.
“The objective of Hamas has never been to make two states, and especially two states as we propose … they want to destroy Israel,” Macron said in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 12. “The recognition of a Palestinian state is the best way to isolate Hamas.”
The French leader has argued that this move is the only way to bring peace and stability to the region, noting that the terrorist group has never supported a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and would likely oppose a Palestinian state since it would have no governing role.
“Hamas is just obsessed with destroying Israel,” Macron told US television network CBS in an interview. “But I recognize the legitimacy of so many Palestinian people who want a state … and we shouldn’t push them toward Hamas.”
However, the Palestinian terrorist group has repeatedly praised such plans to recognize a Palestinian state as “the fruits of Oct. 7,” citing the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and its aftermath as the reason for increasing Western support.
France’s expected move has also sparked strong reactions across the country, amid an already tense and hostile climate.
CRIF has repeatedly denounced the recognition of a Palestinian state, calling it “a moral failing, a diplomatic error, and a political danger,” and warned that it would exacerbate antisemitism amid a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has also condemned the initiative, accusing Macron of supporting it “purely for electoral reasons.”
Meanwhile, France’s left-wing opposition welcomed Macron’s decision, with Olivier Faure, leader of the Socialist Party, calling on mayors to raise the Palestinian flag over town halls on Monday.
However, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau asked prefects, the government’s local representatives, not to follow through with such gestures, citing the principle of neutrality in public services and warning that violations would be referred to administrative courts.
“There are enough divisive issues in the country without importing the conflict in the Middle East,” the French diplomat wrote in a post on X.
Several French town halls have been forced to take down Palestinian flags following court rulings.
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‘Jews Forbidden Here’: European Jewish Communities Targeted as Latest Outrages Rock Spain, Germany
The children’s bookstore in Sant Cugat, Spain, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and slogans, prompting outrage from the local Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitism continues to surge across Europe, with recent anti-Jewish incidents in Spain and Germany leaving Jewish communities shocked and outraged.
On Tuesday, a children’s bookstore in Sant Cugat, a small town by Barcelona, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and slogans.
An unknown individual spray-painted messages — including “Zionist” and “accomplice to genocide” — along with a Palestinian flag across the bookstore’s facade.
The store’s owner, Mont Soler, voiced her “deepest rejection” of this act of anti-Jewish hatred.
“This attack is not only against my bookstore, but also against the values of coexistence and respect that I have always stood for,” Soler wrote in a post on Instagram.
The Jewish Community of Barcelona (CJB) also condemned the incident, expressing solidarity with the store’s owner and urging the authorities to take action.
“This attack is not just against a landmark bookstore, but also against the values of coexistence, respect, and diversity that should define our society,” CJB said in a statement.
“Antisemitism and all forms of intolerance have no place in Sant Cugat, in Catalonia, or anywhere else,” the statement read.
This incident comes amid a surge in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment across Europe and around the world since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Wednesday, a shop owner in Flensburg, a small town in northern Germany, ignited outrage by displaying a sign in his store window that read, “Jews are forbidden here.”
The sign also said, “Nothing personal, not even antisemitism, I just can’t stand you.”
According to 60-year-old shop owner Hans Platen-Reisch, the sign was intended as a protest against Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, but he insisted it was not meant to be antisemitic.
“Jews live in Israel, and I can’t tell who supports the strikes and who doesn’t,” Platen-Reisch told a local news outlet.
“To me, it’s hypocrisy. They always say history must not repeat itself, and then they do the same themselves,” he continued.
Social media photos reveal the interior of his shop, featuring a Reich war flag — a symbol used by Nazi Germany during World War II — behind his desk, a RAF poster referring to the far-left terror group Red Army Faction on the wall, and a Palestinian flag displayed in the window.
Shortly after the incident, the Flensburg prosecutor’s office filed five criminal complaints and opened an investigation into Platen-Reisch on suspicion of incitement to hatred.
Felix Klein, Germany’s commissioner for combating antisemitism, denounced the incident as a shocking display of hatred and called for swift legal action.
“This is clear antisemitism, with direct connections to the Nazi period, when Jews were boycotted and signs like these were widespread,” Klein said in an interview with German television.
“This must not be tolerated under any circumstances,” he continued.
German Education Minister Karin Prien, the first Jewish woman to hold a federal ministerial post in Germany, also condemned the incident and expressed strong support for the Jewish community.
“Anyone who expresses or justifies antisemitism opposes everything our democratic life represents,” Prien told a local newspaper. “Let there be no doubt: We will not tolerate antisemitism – not in Flensburg, not in Germany, not anywhere in the world.”
Israel’s Ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, voiced his strong condemnation of the incident.
“The 1930s are back! In Flensburg, ‘Jews forbidden’ is once again hanging in a shop window — in the year 2025. Just like back then, in the streets, cafés and shops of the 1930s,” Prosor wrote in a post on X.
“This is exactly how it started — step by step, sign by sign. It is the same old hatred, only in a new guise,” the Israeli diplomat continued.
Die 30er-Jahre sind zurück!
In Flensburg hängt wieder „Juden verboten“ im Schaufenster – im Jahr 2025. Wie damals in den Straßen, Cafés und Geschäften der 1930er.
Genau so hat es angefangen – Schritt für Schritt, Schild für Schild. Es ist der gleiche alte Hass, nur in einer… pic.twitter.com/seZmJ4OPsv
— Ambassador Ron Prosor (@Ron_Prosor) September 18, 2025
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Trump Administration Plans $6.4 Billion in Weapons Sales to Israel, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, US, Feb/ 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
The Trump administration is seeking congressional approval to sell Israel $6.4 billion in support equipment and weapons including attack helicopters and troop carriers, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Israel‘s military said it had expanded operations in Gaza City on Friday and bombarded Hamas infrastructure.
The news of the proposed sale came days before world leaders were set to gather in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly next week, which the UN Security Council is also due to hold a high-level meeting on Gaza.
The planned package includes a deal worth $3.8 billion for 30 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and $1.9 billion for 3,250 infantry assault vehicles for the Israeli army.
Another $750 million worth of support parts for armored personnel carriers and power supplies are also working its way through the sale process, one of the people said.
US Republican President Donald Trump’s full-throated support for Israel‘s military contrasts with growing wariness about Israel‘s campaign in Gaza among Democrats.
On Thursday, a group of US senators introduced the first Senate resolution to urge recognition of a Palestinian state and more than half of Democrats in the Senate recently voted against further arms sales.
The Wall Street Journal reported the potential helicopter and vehicle sales on Friday.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.