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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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What Jackson, Mississippi’s only synagogue means to its city — in the wake of arson, and beyond
When Beth Israel Congregation was dedicated in Jackson, Mississippi, in the summer of 1875, the occasion was marked with a procession that began in front of City Hall.
A local paper reported that the synagogue was so crowded that many were unable to gain admission. Visitors had come from all over the South: Vicksburg, Canton, New Orleans, Memphis, and beyond. Christians were present and explicitly welcomed. The service concluded with an elegant supper and a ball at Angelo’s Hall on Capitol Street, a venue that could comfortably accommodate 400 people. Much of the crowd remained out celebrating until dawn.
This was a city witnessing Jewish life in public and welcoming it, even though the congregation numbered only about 80 souls. And it was also a city reckoning with the aftermath of hate: The ceremony marked the opening of a rebuilt synagogue, after an earlier Beth Israel building had been destroyed by “an incendiary” the year before.
This history matters now. Jackson has long known a double inheritance: the reality of antisemitism, and the presence of neighbors who showed up to support the Jewish community.
After an antisemitic arson attack on Saturday severely damaged Beth Israel — which was rebuilt after being bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1967 — national coverage moved quickly to frame the event as confirmation of a familiar story about Mississippi. One outlet led with the phrase “Mississippi Goddam,” invoking the title of Nina Simone’s civil rights protest anthem as a shorthand for moral condemnation.
Outrage in the face of antisemitic violence is justified. But framing Jackson primarily as a home to deeply rooted hatreds obscures the local reality: a synagogue that has long benefited from relationships with churches and civic partners, and a city where Jewish life has persisted through cooperation, not isolation. When that context disappears, so do the stories of neighbors who still live there, and who will be working to rebuild long after the headlines fade.
Months before the fire, I wrote for a local Jackson publication about Beth Israel’s history as a civic and interfaith institution in the city. My reporting traced how the synagogue’s 19th-century dedication unfolded as a public event, with Christian leaders in attendance and the building treated as a point of local pride.
And it showed me how significant a source of pride Beth Israel has been to its hometown — one of the truths lost, after the arson, in a rush to define Mississippi as a one-dimensional home of bigotry.
The 1875 reports on the synagogue’s opening lingered on details that newspapers of the time reserved for buildings that were points of civic pride, dwelling on the height of the sanctuary, the carved woodwork of the altar, the light from arched windows, and the number of people the pews could seat. One paper ventured that no small congregation “in the entire South, if indeed the whole country,” possessed as fine a place of worship as Beth Israel in Jackson.
That pride is still evident today, particularly in the swell of interfaith support that followed Sunday’s fire.
As the president of Beth Israel Congregation told the Forward, multiple churches reached out in the days following the arson, offering their sanctuaries as temporary worship space for the congregation while repairs are underway.
Rebuilding, he noted, could take up to a year. In the meantime, Jewish life in Jackson would continue.
That gesture may have been quiet, but it is not small. It means Christian congregations opening their doors not just for a one-night vigil or brief program, but for the long, ordinary work of sustaining religious life: making space for Shabbat services, holidays, study and gathering.
This history is not new. After the 1874 arson, local papers reported that a subscription had been started to rebuild the synagogue and predicted that the call would be “generously responded to.” A year later, the congregation, described as “Spartan-like,” rebuilt, assisted by friends in the wider Jackson community.
When Beth Israel dedicated a new synagogue in 1942, amid World War II, the ceremony again unfolded as a civic occasion. The governor of Mississippi sent greetings, the mayor spoke on behalf of the city, and representatives of Catholic and Protestant churches were present.
In his dedication sermon, Rabbi Julian Feibelman urged that the synagogue be consecrated “to everything that is true and that is blessed in the teachings of our faith,” and called it a house meant for “intercommunication and society — the ethical in life.”
When we treat a place as defined by inevitable hatred, we suggest that the people who actually live there are incapable of building a stronger and more welcoming communal life — people like Feibelman, who, in that 1942 sermon, said the synagogue aimed to be “a perpetual lamp” within the community. We treat antisemitism as something to fear from a distance, rather than something neighbors can confront together.
That kind of framing leaves out the work that follows violence. Jewish life in Jackson is not something to be guarded from afar. It is sustained locally, as an integral part of the city it has helped shape.
The post What Jackson, Mississippi’s only synagogue means to its city — in the wake of arson, and beyond appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Strikes Hezbollah Targets in Several Areas in Lebanon
Illustrative: Smoke rises after Israeli strikes following Israeli military’s evacuation orders, in Tayr Debba, southern Lebanon, Nov. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hankir
The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah targets in several areas in Lebanon on Thursday, adding that the strikes were in response to Hezbollah‘s “repeated violations of the ceasefire.”
An Israeli military spokesperson had earlier issued a warning to residents of certain buildings in the Lebanese village of Sohmor.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024, ending more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that had culminated in Israeli strikes that severely weakened the Iran-backed terrorist group. Since then, the sides have traded accusations over violations.
Lebanon has faced growing pressure from the US and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear that Israel could dramatically escalate strikes across the battered country to push Lebanon‘s leaders to confiscate Hezbollah‘s arsenal more quickly.
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Pakistan-Saudi-Turkey Defense Deal in Pipeline, Pakistani Minister Says
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meet in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have prepared a draft defense agreement after nearly a year of talks, Pakistan‘s Minister for Defense Production said, a signal they could be seeking a bulwark against a flare-up of regional violence in the last two years.
Raza Hayat Harraj told Reuters on Wednesday the potential deal between the three regional powers was separate from a bilateral Saudi–Pakistani accord announced last year. A final consensus between the three states is needed to complete the deal, he said.
“The Pakistan–Saudi Arabia-Turkey trilateral agreement is something that is already in pipeline,” Harraj said in an interview.
“The draft agreement is already available with us. The draft agreement is already with Saudi Arabia. The draft agreement is already available with Turkey. And all three countries are deliberating. And this agreement has been there for the last 10 months.”
Asked at a press conference in Istanbul on Thursday about media reports on negotiations between the three sides, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said talks had been held but that no agreement had been signed.
Fidan pointed to a need for broader regional cooperation and trust to overcome distrust that creates “cracks and problems” that led to the emergence of external hegemonies, or wars and instability stemming from terrorism, in the region.
“At the end of all of these, we have a proposal like this: all regional nations must come together to create a cooperation platform on the issue of security,” Fidan said. Regional issues could be resolved if relevant countries would “be sure of each other,” he added.
“At the moment, there are meetings, talks, but we have not signed any agreement. Our President [Tayyip Erdogan]’s vision is for an inclusive platform that creates wider, bigger cooperation and stability,” Fidan said, without naming Pakistan or Saudi Arabia directly.