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At this unique yearlong Torah study program in Jerusalem, students are encouraged to ask ‘Why?’
JERUSALEM — Walk the streets of Jerusalem on any given weekday morning, and you will discover there’s no shortage of intensive Torah study in this city that symbolizes the beating heart of the Jewish people.
Yet among the many yeshivas and seminaries it’s rare to find a beit midrash, or Jewish study hall, marked both by a commitment to egalitarian values and serious Torah study — not to mention one where Jews of color, LGBTQ+ Jews, converts, and Jews from marginalized groups are integral to the community.
The Conservative Yeshiva, which is part of the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, threads that unique needle: It is a place in central Jerusalem where leaders and seekers from all backgrounds come to deepen their Jewish scholarship and find their place in Jewish tradition.
“Students come here with a sense of intellectual integrity and honesty to engage with traditional texts,” said Liz M.K. Nelson, a former kollel student from the yeshiva originally from Detroit who is now the yeshiva’s recruiter. “They come here on their individual journeys, with their different approaches to Judaism, with a real sense of determination to pursue their individual spiritual goals in an intentional community.”
Even when it comes to Jewish texts that challenge their views and values, Nelson said, “Here they can grapple with them in a space where everyone is dedicated to working through them with a sense of commitment to tradition, community, and integrity.”
The Conservative Yeshiva offers a range of programs, from summer experiences to winter break learning programs to partnerships that can lead to a master’s degree in Jewish education or even the rabbinate.
But the flagships of the institution are its long-term learning programs.
Called Lishma — a Hebrew term that means doing or learning for its own sake — the program welcomes post-college students of any age. The Lishma program is currently accepting applicants for the fall; it is open to both full-time and part-time students.
Students from the Lishma and Advanced Halakhah programs eat with faculty at a weekly community lunch. (Jonny Finkel)
Orah Liss, a native of Frankfurt, Germany, who was raised in a Masorti home (the equivalent of Conservative Judaism outside of North America), came to Lishma after completing a Jewish studies program in Sweden focused on Jewish literature, history and philosophy. Liss, 26, was looking to learn more from and about traditional Jewish texts.
“I wanted to build the familiarity with it — not just the what, but the why. I wanted to read the Talmud and have an understanding of it,” Liss said. “For me the halacha is very important, as is the traditional prayer service, so I wanted a place with the traditional aspects along with egalitarianism.”
The generous spirit of the yeshiva community became evident when Liss was saying Kaddish for her grandmother, she said. Even on days when there were no scheduled prayer services, she said, “I asked for people to come for a minyan and on every day people showed up.”
Some students use the year at Lishma as a stepping-stone to rabbinical school. A new track called Omek (Hebrew for “depth”) offers specialization in areas that expands students’ Jewish literacy and breadth of spiritual knowledge on the pathway to becoming a rabbi at one of the seminaries with which the Yeshiva works — such as the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles.
The focus isn’t just Jewish study, but also community building, immersion in authentic Jewish living and even innovation in worship.
Devorah Gillard, 66, a Lishma student from Nova Scotia, Canada, said she came to the Conservative Yeshiva at the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center to learn Torah in an open environment.
“The Conservative Yeshiva encourages you to ask and explore and expand. You are not judged. They hear what you have to say — your doubts and fears —and they help you to grow,” she said.
Raised as an evangelical Christian, Gillard’s lifelong spiritual journey led her to convert to Judaism eight years ago. She’s now a board member of the Canadian Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Toronto. “I wanted to understand what it meant to be Jewish, to get to the depth of Torah,” Gillard said.
Ejnat Willing discusses the Talmud in a class at the yeshiva in the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center. (Jonny Finkel)
She said her fellow students have a zeal to engage with Judaism and do good in the world that’s infectious.
“These are people who are really serious about their religion and God and don’t just daven,” or pray, Gillard said. “They are more aware of the environment, food insecurity and inclusion. They go after what they want to do in this world.”
The Lishma program draws some 30 students a year to its Jerusalem campus from near and far. They study Talmud, Tanakh, and Midrash as well as Jewish philosophy and prayer in a way that seeks to accommodate modern scholarship and the contemporary world. Students come from all kinds of levels of Jewish knowledge and Hebrew proficiency; the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center offers supporting programs to bring people up to speed as needed.
Allan Fis-Calderon spent most of his 20s advancing his career as a movie scriptwriter in Mexico City. But when the Covid-19 pandemic shut the world down, Fis-Calderon, 30, began to revisit his desire to study Torah. His rabbi from the city’s egalitarian Beit El Masorti synagogue suggested he look into the Conservative Yeshiva.
“So far this has been the best experience in my life — to experience Judaism from a liberal place where they take me into account. I feel at home and part of the group,” he said. “This has given me the opportunity to study Torah and develop myself as a Jew.”
Being in Israel at this crucial moment, where it feels like society is deeply divided, has made him appreciate Israel even more, Fis-Calderon said.
Much of the learning is conducted using the traditional Jewish method of chevruta, where students learn in pairs, but there is also plenty of classroom time with teachers.
Rabbi Joel Levy, the rosh yeshiva (yeshiva head), said his goal is to move every student along on their own journey of Jewish discovery.
“This is an immersive environment but not a coercive one. People need space and time to work out their relationship with Judaism and literacy,” Levy said. “Some people will come out of the other end saying they want to keep Shabbat and others will not keep Shabbat. I consider it a success when that decision has been made as an informed adult.”
Levy’s job, he said, is to create a space where people can take their own search seriously and openly.
The students who come to the Conservative Yeshiva hail from a range of Jewish denominations, races, ages, sexual orientations and gender identities. Though each may be in their own place in their individual religious journey, they learn and experience Jerusalem and Israel together as members of a Jewish community, he said.
“It is a total privilege to be with a group of people who are thinking about and searching for how to translate the wisdom and value of our tradition to today’s beautifully complex world,” Levy said.
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Muslim and Sephardic Jewish college students are connecting over shared heritage
Joseph Pool, a senior at Rollins College in Florida, grew up hearing his Moroccan-born grandparents describe Mimouna, a traditional Moroccan Jewish celebration marking the return to eating chametz after Passover. Because Jewish families had cleared their homes of chametz for the holiday, Muslim neighbors would bring over fresh flour, butter, and milk, and together they would enjoy a chametz-filled meal.
Amid rising campus tensions after October 7, Pool decided to host a Mimouna event of his own at Rollins College, and Muslim students showed up in droves.
“I spent years sleeping over at my grandparents’ house and hearing stories about the connection Muslims and Jews shared in Morocco,” Pool said. Seeing Muslim classmates embrace the celebration, he recalled thinking: “Wow, this is still the case today. There is still this connection ability here.”
At a moment when Jewish-Muslim tensions have intensified on campuses nationwide, some Sephardic and Muslim students say shared cultural heritage, rather than formal interfaith programming, is opening unexpected space for connection.
SAMi (Sephardic American Mizrahi Initiative) hosts Sephardic cultural programming on 16 college campuses across the country, including Persian music karaoke nights, hamsa painting events, and Mimouna celebrations. According to Manashe Khaimov, SAMi’s founder and CEO, roughly 10% of the 6,000 students the organization has engaged are Muslim.
The events are not intended to be spaces for interfaith dialogue, and that is a big part of their appeal. “Students don’t want to show up to an interfaith event unless [they’re] interested in political dialogue,” said Khaimov. Rather, students who are just looking for a place to engage with their culture show up to listen to the kind of music they grew up with, eat familiar foods, and hear Arabic or Farsi spoken.
For many Muslim students, SAMi events “smell the way it smells at home” as opposed to many Jewish spaces on college campuses that can feel “foreign” or “alienating,” said Khaimov. “For most of the Muslim students,” he said, “this is the first time even walking into Hillel spaces.”
Emily Nisimov, a Bukharian student from Queens College who organized Sephardic heritage events on her campus with SAMi, said, “The point of the events originally was to spread love and intimacy between Jewish students.” To her surprise, Muslim students started showing up. “Maybe they did just come for the food,” she said, “but the fact is that they stayed and they interacted with us and they tried to find a middle ground, which I was really impressed and shocked by.”
These connections are not limited to organized programming. Across campuses, Muslim students say friendships with Sephardic and Mizrahi peers have reshaped their understanding of Judaism, and Jewish students say the friendships have changed them, too.
Ali Mohsin Bozdar, a Muslim student at Springfield College who met Sephardic students through Interfaith America’s BRAID fellowship, said, “Jewish people from Middle Eastern backgrounds — most of the culture is similar. The food, the music, the language. I found that really fascinating,” he said. “It automatically binds you.”
Yishmael Columna, a Moroccan Jewish student and SAMi organizer at Florida International University, said the exchange has been mutual. “After Oct. 7”, he said, “it’s easy to give in to hate.” But getting to know Muslim peers complicated that instinct. “I wouldn’t be able to form opinions on many things as well as I do now if I didn’t have these conversations with them,” he said.
Sofia Houir, a Moroccan Muslim senior at Columbia University, said she had never met a Jewish person before attending college. Forming close friendships with Sephardic students on Columbia’s campus changed that. “Having friends who are Middle Eastern Jews definitely made Judaism more personal to me,” she said. “You can read about Judaism, you can study it, but talking to friends about how they grew up made me realize that, regardless of our religion, we’re all North African or Middle Eastern.”
Sofia formed a particularly close bond with an Iraqi Israeli student, Orpaz Zamir, during her time at Columbia, which she says deeply influenced her decision to travel to Israel for the first time. “Orpaz played a huge role in me going to Israel, just because I’m super close to him. And I really, really wanted to discover his culture, and to discover his country,” she said.
But that decision came with consequences.
Sofia said that her friendships with Jewish and Israeli students as well as her decision to travel to Israel caused peers in the Muslim and Arab communities on campus to stop speaking to her.
“I had some heated arguments with people who basically argued with me as if I was representing the Israeli government,” she said. “The frustrating thing was that they never had a conversation with me about it. They just presumed that me going was me validating Netanyahu’s politics or betraying the Palestinians.”
Nisimov said campus tensions at Queens College, part of New York City’s public university system, have not disappeared simply because of a heightened awareness of shared culture.
After October 7, she said, “A lot of claims were made that we should go back to where we came from.” “We tried to explain to them — just like you, we came from the same spot — but they didn’t want to listen.”
Even so, she said, her personal friendships have endured outside the realm of discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “My Muslim friend and I, we’re not really on the political level of conversation,” she said. “But we have plenty of conversations about our cultures and our religions and the differences and similarities.”
Rethinking Jewish Whiteness
For some students, these relationships have also challenged assumptions about Jewish identity and, thus, the tenor of political conversations.
Mian Muhammad Abdul Hamid, a Muslim student from Syracuse University, told the Forward that he “thinks the majority” of Muslim students on his college campus believe Jews only come from Europe. “When people think Jewish, the first thing that pops up is European.”
Bozdar agreed. “When I met these people, it confirmed for me that there are Jews from the Middle East,” he said. “Until you meet people, nothing is for sure.”
Columna recalled participating in a tabling event about Israel shortly after Oct. 7, when a Muslim student approached him to talk. The two later became friends. Weeks later, Columna asked why he had approached him rather than the other nearby Jewish students.
“He told me, ‘I decided to talk to you because, in contrast to the Ashkenazi Jews nearby, you were the only one who looked brown,” Columna said.
“I feel that sometimes the reason why these conversations do not work is because Muslim students don’t feel that Jews are even part of the Middle East,” said Columna. “Once you break that wall, and you find a common ground,” he said, “it becomes a more productive conversation.”
Zamir, an Iraqi Jewish student at Columbia University, described a similar experience. Though initially nervous about enrolling amid campus tensions, he said, “I never felt I was being attacked for my views.”
A Muslim friend later told him it was because he was seen as “from the region.”
“If you are Mizrahi,” Zamir said, “Muslim students respect what you say a bit more because if you’re from the region, you’re entitled to be there.”
But that dynamic also raises uncomfortable questions about which Jewish students are seen as having legitimate perspectives on campus.
“There’s this extreme position that Ashkenazi Jews shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t have this view because they’re ‘colonizers,’ but you’re okay because you’re part of the region,” he said.
“Unfortunately, this is the case, but it also makes my interactions with them easier,” he added.
While several students said their conversations about their shared background remain at the cultural level rather than getting political, Pool believes shared meals can create space for conversations that lean on these shared identities.
“If you share a meal with someone, you start with something in common,” he said. “You have the same food, maybe then you have the same family tradition of how to cook this food. And then suddenly, when you’re talking about politics, you can talk about just a political issue versus it being your entire identity.”
The post Muslim and Sephardic Jewish college students are connecting over shared heritage appeared first on The Forward.
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The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI
As friends, relatives and even colleagues dive headlong into our AI future, I’ve been stuck nervously on the platform’s edge. I’m not a skeptic of technology by nature, but by experience. I’ve watched too many shiny new toys come along, promising to make society smarter or better connected, only to become superspreaders of confusion, alienation and disenfranchisement.
So when you tell me a machine can summarize any book, draw any picture or write any email, my first thought is going to be, What could possibly go wrong?
This, too, was the reaction of the Haredi rabbis who declared a communal fast over AI last month.
“If at the push of a button, I can get a hold of a d’var torah for my Shabbos meal from AI, to us, that’s a problem,” a Haredi leader told me at the time. “No, no — I want you to open the book and read it and come up with a question and come up with an answer. That’s part of what’s holy about learning Torah. It’s not just end result. It’s the process.”
Curious about their logic, I spent some time tracking down Lakewood’s gedolim to learn more. This was no straightforward task — I found it easier to get a hold of their wives than the great rabbis themselves. Even at dinner hour, these titans of Torah study were still in the beit midrash. But eventually I got through to three — thanks to my cousin Jeffrey, who knew a rav who knew a rav — and that was fortunate, because I came away with the Jewish skeleton key to our brave new world.
That key is the Jewish value of עֲמֵילוּת (ameilut), or toil. As far as Jewish values go, ameilut is an obscure one. It lacks the celebrity swagger of its better-known peers like chesed and tzedakah or the political power of tikkun olam. It was never associated with a biblical matriarch or carved into a golem’s forehead. Yet I believe it is just as crucial. Yes, toiling is a mitzvah. And in the age of AI, ameilut can be a human road map.
The word’s root appears a couple dozen times in the Hebrew Bible — unsurprisingly, it’s a recurring theme in Job — but its salience comes not from the Torah but from commentary on Leviticus 26:3, which establishes ameilut as a sacred endeavor. When God implores Israel to “walk with” the commandments, Rashi, an 11th century rabbi whose commentaries are considered authoritative, reinterpreted this to mean that God wants Jews to be ameilim b’torah — toiling in Torah study. He is reinterpreting God’s command that we walk and move forward to also mean that we should take time to stand still, turn over (and over) the same words to find new meaning and view getting stuck as a sign of progress.
For Haredim — who pronounce it ameilus — the notion that struggle can be its own reward underpins a life spent poring over sefarim in the beit midrash (and missing phone calls from the Jewish press). It follows that ChatGPT, which transforms knowledge from something developed to something consumed, is anathema to their approach. They’ve realized that making learning easy has actually made learning hard.
To be sure, the goals of the Haredi world are not exactly the same as mine. Those communities are famously insular, wary of the internet and especially cognizant of secular society’s pernicious influence. I’m basically the opposite: I love to mix it up (including with Haredi Jews) and am extremely online. A little narishkeit is good for the soul, as far as I can tell.
But I’ve found that ameilut-maxxing translates pretty well to non-religious life, too. It’s an imperative to embrace the challenge. As a notoriously limited chef, I’m now toiling in cookbooks; as a writer, I can cherish the blank page. Reframing the hard part as the good part, then, is a reminder that the toil is actually our divine right. Because ameilut is something AI can’t experience, replicate or understand. It is the very essence of what it means to be alive.
The post The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI appeared first on The Forward.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.