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Looming Jewish teacher shortage prompts new accelerated training in well-known Jerusalem program
When Rabbi David Wallach was looking for an institution to help him become a better Jewish day school teacher, he was frustrated to find that most of the places he researched offered either training in Jewish studies or general teacher training. It was hard to find both.
Then he discovered the Pardes Teacher Fellowship in Jerusalem, where he ended up getting his master’s degree in Jewish education.
“Pardes is the only place that integrated for me both the Jewish studies and the pedagogy,” said Wallach, now 32 and a teacher and assistant director of Jewish studies at Les Ecoles Azrieli Herzliah High School in Montreal, Canada. “It wasn’t that you learn Judaism in one place and learn education in another. This entire program is about the pedagogy of Jewish learning. That approach is unique, powerful and invaluable for me.”
More than 270 Jewish teachers and educators-in-training from North America have gone through the Pardes Teacher Fellowship, a two-year master’s program that offers participants intensive Jewish learning, Jewish educational pedagogy, practical student-teacher training and mentoring in North American day schools.
A mainstay for over two decades, the well-known fellowship is being redesigned for next year to make some key changes that administrators believe will better serve the future teachers of Jewish day schools: Instead of requiring two years in Israel with monthlong student-teaching stints along the way, Pardes is offering an accelerated program that requires just one year of intense study in Jerusalem followed by a second year of teacher training in schools in North America.
The program is funded, so students’ expenses are minimized and they receive a stipend, and at the program’s conclusion they obtain their master’s degree. Pardes is currently accepting applications for the fall.
“This is a unique opportunity to study pedagogy with spectacular teachers in Jewish education,” said Aviva Lauer, director of the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
There’s another reason for the changes at Pardes: a looming crisis in Jewish education to which the Jewish world hasn’t fully woken up, according to some educational leaders.
“The crisis that we knew was coming is here. Jewish day schools, early childhood centers and part-time congregational schools across the country face a shortage of educators to fill multiple openings for lead teachers, assistants and substitutes,” wrote the authors of a recent piece in the online publication eJewish Philanthropy published by leaders from the Association of Directors of Communal Agencies for Jewish Education. “This is no longer simply a ‘challenge.’ Rather, it is a crisis because of continuing trends in the overall job market, exacerbated by the pandemic.”
The shortage is related in part to low salaries in the profession. A recent report by the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education showed that fewer new teachers are entering education and more current teachers are leaving. As a result, many Jewish schools are hiring staff without appropriate training.
“We are looking for teacher candidates who love Jewish text, Jewish living, and Jewish tradition, recognize that the children are our future, and want to serve their communities as role models for the next generation,” said Rabbi Avi Spodek, director of recruitment at the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
Rabbi Jordan Soffer, head of school at the Striar Hebrew Academy in Sharon, Massachusetts, used his training in the Pardes Teacher Fellowship to enhance his classroom teaching. (Courtesy of Pardes)
Pardes’ revamped fellowship program tightens its format with a more modular structure that offers more credit for the pedagogy courses students take in Israel and credit for some courses online. The purpose of the change is to enhance the practical training and enable those who can only get away to Israel for a single academic year (plus two summers) to participate.
“The new format is a soft easing-in to teaching,” Lauer said, giving students time to immerse themselves in a school before becoming full-time teachers.
The principle that guides the Pardes approach is subject-specific pedagogy, according to Lauer: “Not just how to be a teacher but how to be a Jewish studies teacher. It’s learning how to integrate and balance textual content with what we call ‘meaning-mining.’ It’s about introducing our students to varied lenses through which they might teach Jewish texts, and helping them explore what will be important and meaningful to them to teach their future students.”
The Pardes program boasts a star-studded staff, including Yiscah Smith, Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, Judy Klitsner, and Rabbi Zvi Hirschfield for Jewish studies, and Rachel Friedrichs, Reuven Margrett, Sefi Kraut, and Susan Yammer for the pedagogical components.
“The teachers are so special,” said Josh Less, a current fellow. “They are all unique in their own ways and have a great grasp of their subjects.”
Pardes attracts students from a diversity of Jewish denominational, cultural and professional backgrounds. The program’s alumni include six heads of school, five principals, 12 Jewish studies department chairs and six directors of Jewish life, among scores of Jewish teachers.
Less, 28, who recently completed a round of teacher training at the Milken School in Los Angeles, said the Pardes program has given him critical classroom experience and essential Jewish study skills that he learned in Pardes’ beit midrash, or Jewish study hall. He plans to become a full-time day school teacher but first wants to get his rabbinical ordination.
“My advice to someone thinking about this program is: Definitely do it!” Less said. “The program is such a blessing for the right person who wants to do intense learning and teaching. It’s intense but indispensable.”
Wallach said the most valuable thing he took away from the Pardes program was how to connect learning to practice. When he teaches about Passover, for example, Wallach turns his classroom walls into an art gallery, hanging dozens of images of the Seder’s four children drawn from different haggadahs and asking his students to explain which images speak to them. That gets them talking. Once they’re done analyzing, he asks the students to create their own images of the four children.
“This kind of exercise always gets them. They are intrigued by it. They are involved,” said Wallach, who has been teaching for seven years. He credits Pardes with showing him this kind of approach to learning.
“It wasn’t just: Here’s how to teach, in theory. It was about how to teach this specific Jewish studies text, the pedagogy of it,” he recalled. “We practiced it, and we had a chance to actually live it, both with our peer training and the teaching.”
Wallach added, “All the best teachers I know went through Pardes.”
Having excellent teachers is critical for the future of the Jewish people, Lauer said.
“Our goal is to give our fellows outstanding training – for their own sake, for the sake of the schools that will hire them, for the sake of the children and for the sake of the future of the Jewish people,” she said. “People who graduate from our program are avidly sought-after and seen as stars in the field. We are hoping to find the new stars. The Jewish world needs new stars.”
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The post Looming Jewish teacher shortage prompts new accelerated training in well-known Jerusalem program appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Imam-led walkout over Jewish participant at CUNY interfaith event draws wide condemnation
(JTA) — Jewish groups and government officials are condemning an incident at a recent interfaith event held on the campus of the City College of New York, at which a Muslim leader reportedly led a student walkout against the Hillel director after saying he refused to be “sitting next to a Zionist.”
The incident took place last week and was first reported Wednesday by the Times of Israel, which obtained a recording of the event hosted by the college’s Office of Student Inclusion Initiatives.
The imam let loose a series of remarks about Shariah law and “the filthy rich” before stating, “I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist and this is something I’m not going to accept. My people are being killed right now in Gaza.”
He then added, “If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.” Roughly 100 Muslim students followed him out the door, according to the report, and the chaplain hosting the event expressed disbelief.
“This is not dialogue — it is harassment,” the Anti-Defamation League’s New York chapter wrote on the social network X. The chapter’s director Scott Richman called the incident “a truly disgusting display of raw antisemitism not only by the imam but by the huge crowd of people there for an interfaith event who followed him out the door because a Jew was present.”
“We unequivocally condemn this gross display of antisemitism at City College of New York,” the Nexus Project, a progressive-leaning antisemitism watchdog group, wrote on social media.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul blasted the walkout as “antisemitism, plain and simple,” adding, “No one should be singled out, targeted, or shamed because they are Jewish.” She urged the City University of New York, the public university system that includes the campus, “to act swiftly to ensure accountability and protect every student’s safety.”
Hochul’s Republican opponent in next year’s governor race, Rep. Elise Stefanik, called CUNY “a hotbed of antisemitism.”
The federal Department of Justice, which has used its authority to pressure universities to quash antisemitism, also has an eye on the situation. “This is deeply concerning,” tweeted Associate Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. “@CivilRights has questions and will look into this!”
The Hillel at City College, in an email to members, wrote, “Our concern is with one individual’s extremist rhetoric—not with Islam, not with Muslim students, and not with interfaith engagement itself.” It added that it was confident that City College would “respond appropriately” to the incident.
CUNY said it was aware of the incident and was investigating.
Jewish Insider later identified the Muslim speaker, who had identified himself only as “Abdullah” on the recording, as Abdullah Mady, a recent psychology graduate of the school who stayed on to pursue a master’s degree in medical translation. In a biography published online by his department, accompanied by a photograph in which he is wearing a keffiyeh, Mady says he aims to become a doctor.
Ilya Bratman, who runs the Hillel that serves City College as well as several other local public and private schools, told the Times of Israel that he was in attendance but that there were not many other Jewish students present because the Hillel had been hosting a talk with a Holocaust survivor in another room in the same building.
One Jewish student who was in attendance told the moderator after the walkout, “You’re in shock? We’re not, we’re used to it.”
The post Imam-led walkout over Jewish participant at CUNY interfaith event draws wide condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Kaploun leans on personal story and Holocaust education in bid to become Trump’s antisemitism envoy
(JTA) — Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. antisemitism envoy, pledged to elevate Holocaust education and combat what he called a “global problem” of ignorance-driven antisemitism during a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, while sidestepping the more partisan controversies that prompted a rebuke from a group of House Democrats ahead of the session.
“Together with bipartisan support, we must educate the world to respect one another,” Kaploun told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in an opening statement that drew heavily on his personal encounters with antisemitism — from childhood taunts in Brooklyn to the Crown Heights riots and the deaths of family members on 9/11 and Oct. 7.
“I pledge to all of you here, I will not waver and I will not rest … to fight antisemitism everywhere and to make this world a better arena for God to dwell,” he said.
Kaploun, a Hasidic rabbi, Miami-based businessman and Trump ally, cast antisemitism as “a symbol of a larger hatred” and warned that societies that tolerate it invite broader violence.
He emphasized repeatedly that the core of the job must be education — of Holocaust history, of Jewish life in America and of the “Judeo-Christian values our country was founded on.”
But committee Democrats pressed him on political issues, including the administration’s muted response to a friendly interview that right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson recently conducted with Nick Fuentes, a antisemitic influencer. Asked whether Trump’s comments about Carlson — praising him while declining to denounce Fuentes — were appropriate, Kaploun responded by stressing freedom of speech while asserting that the administration is clear in condemning antisemitism.
“You have a right to hate, but we have a right to explain and stand up and abhor everything that you say,” he said, adding that he believes in condemning antisemitic remarks “whenever they need to be condemned” while maintaining free expression rights.
The exchange came a day after 18 House Democrats urged the Senate to reject Kaploun’s nomination, citing his past comments about Democrats and his failure to publicly challenge Trump’s use of antisemitic tropes during the 2024 campaign. The letter also highlighted past litigation involving Kaploun in Miami, previously reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Kaploun pointed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism when asked about distinguishing antisemitism from criticism of Israel. “Anyone has a right to criticize Israel,” but singling out the country while ignoring other global issues can cross the line, he said.
Outside groups were divided on Kaploun. In a letter to the committee, Orthodox Union Advocacy Center leaders Nathan Diament and Isaac Pretter did not explicitly endorse Kaploun but said he is “familiar with the issues facing Jews around the world” and has shown a willingness to work across the aisle, including by co-authoring a JTA op-ed earlier this year with the two previous antisemitism envoys. But another national Jewish group, the liberal Zionist New Jewish Network, came out in direct opposition and called on senators to reject the nomination. “The administration’s weaponization of antisemitism has been appalling. Confirmation of Rabbi Kaploun adds insult to injury,” wrote the group’s CEO, Hadar Susskind.
The committee has not yet scheduled a vote on the nomination.
The post Kaploun leans on personal story and Holocaust education in bid to become Trump’s antisemitism envoy appeared first on The Forward.
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Amid Push for Gaza Role, Palestinian Authority Continues Paying Terrorists, Teaching Antisemitic Hatred
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looks on as he visits the Istishari Cancer Center in Ramallah, in the West Bank, May 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
As Western powers push for the Palestinian Authority to take a leading role in post-war Gaza, the government body has not delivered on promises of reform, continuing payments to terrorists and using school textbooks that glorify violence, demonize Israelis, and promote antisemitic themes.
On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced the Palestinian Authority (PA) for nearly doubling its payments under its so-called “pay-for-slay” program — from $144 million in 2024 to $214 million so far in 2025 — despite the PA’s repeated promises of reform.
“The Palestinian Authority hasn’t stopped its payments of salaries to terrorists and their families. In fact, it is nearly doubling them,” the top Israeli diplomat said in a post on X.
“I call on Europe and the world to hold the PA accountable for funding terrorism. Stop Pay-for-Slay NOW!” he continued.
The Palestinian Authority hasn’t stopped its payments of salaries to terrorists and their families. In fact, it is nearly doubling them.
In 2024, it paid 144M dollars (€124M). In 2025, it has already committed 214M dollars (€185M) toward Pay-for-Slay, and the year isn’t even… pic.twitter.com/Iwyuy3le6y
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) November 19, 2025
Even though PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced plans to reform the system earlier this year, new media reports reveal that Palestinian leadership has continued to issue payments.
The European Union (EU) is now demanding clarification on whether the “pay-for-slay” program is still operating through bypass channels, according to Euronews.
Western countries have been pushing for the PA to undergo internal reforms, aiming for the group to take control of Gaza after the war under the US-backed peace plan, despite strong Israeli objections.
The PA, which has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has also maintained for years the “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under the policy, the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists.
Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
This week, Israeli officials visited Brussels to present evidence to the bloc that the old “pay-for-slay” program is still operating and may be using funds that EU member states had originally donated for other purposes.
“We understand that a recent payment has been made to the families of prisoners, based on a previous scheme. We profoundly regret this decision, as this seems to go against prior announcements,” the EU Commission told Euronews.
However, the European bloc rejected any suggestion that its funds were involved in the recent payments.
“EU support to the PA is linked to its efforts to pursue the reform agenda,” the EU Commission said.
For years, the EU has been the largest provider of external assistance to the group, allocating approximately $1.47 billion bilaterally between 2021 and 2024.
As the international community seeks to chart a path for Gaza’s reconstruction after the Israel-Hamas war, the PA is maneuvering to take a leading role in the war-torn enclave, despite Israeli objections and with the backing of Western powers — a move that experts say is unlikely to succeed given the PA’s lack of credibility and support for terrorism against Israel.
Along with pledging to reform the “pay-for-slay” program, Abbas has also repeatedly reaffirmed his commitment to long-promised administrative reforms, even saying he intends to hold presidential and general elections after the war under international supervision.
The PA leader was elected to a four-year term in 2005, and he has not held elections since then.
Beyond payments to terrorists, the PA has also repeatedly promised Western powers to reform its school textbooks, which for years have notoriously promoted antisemitism and hatred for Israel.
Despite the PA’s promises, its textbooks continue to glorify violence, demonize Israelis, propagate antisemitic themes, and promote an exclusivist nationalist narrative.
On Wednesday, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a nonprofit organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula around the world, released a new study analyzing 290 textbooks and 71 teachers’ guides used across multiple grades, finding that not a single reform has been made to address previous problematic content that promotes violence and incites hatred.
IMPACT-se’s report on the 2025–26 Palestinian Authority curriculum reveals a disturbing reality: Palestinian children are still being indoctrinated with the glorification of violence, antisemitism, promotion of martyrdom and the rejection of peace—embedded even in math and…
— IMPACT-SE (@IMPACT_SE) November 19, 2025
For years, PA-issued textbooks have been criticized for promoting extremism and undermining efforts to encourage peaceful coexistence with Israelis.
According to the newly released report, the textbooks’ content remains unchanged despite the PA’s explicit promises to reform the curriculum and public assurances from European officials that such reforms were underway.
IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff said the findings “expose a stark and disturbing reality.”
“Virulent antisemitism, the glorification of jihad, and incitement to violence remain deeply embedded across all grades of Palestinian Authority textbooks,” Sheff said in a statement.
For example, Jews and Israelis continue to be portrayed as inherently evil, manipulative, corrupt, or as enemies of Islam, perpetuating deeply rooted antisemitic stereotypes, while the demonization of Israel remains a persistent and striking theme throughout the textbooks.
An 11th-grade history textbook features a cartoon with antisemitic imagery portraying Jews as controlling the world, including a black-and-white image labeled “cultural colonialism” showing two arms gripping a globe — one holding an American flag, the other an Israeli flag.
In a 10th-grade history textbook, it is claimed that after World War II, “the Zionists hoped the US would support the establishment of their national homeland in Palestine — by exploiting their political, media and financial influence in the United States.”
Another example comes from a 9th-grade civics textbook, which claims that Israel “deliberately releases herds of pigs” to damage Palestinian crops and undermine the Palestinian economy.
The newly released study also warns that the textbooks promote and justify violence against Jews and Israelis, fostering a culture of aggression and hostility.
In an 11th-grade history textbook, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre — where 11 Israeli athletes and delegation members were killed — is depicted as a legitimate form of Palestinian resistance.
“The Palestinian resistance resorted to many methods in its struggle against the Zionist occupation. The fedayeen primarily used guerrilla warfare inside Palestinian territories, and also struck Zionist interests abroad — such as the Munich operation in 1972,” the book says.
According to the IMPACT-SE report, references to Jewish history and Israeli-Arab diplomatic efforts have been completely removed from the 2025–2026 textbooks, with any content promoting non-violence or compromise absent and the Holocaust entirely ignored.
The PA had committed to curriculum reforms earlier this year in order to secure over $462 million in economic support from the European Union, contingent on meeting specific education-related benchmarks.