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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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Bombing Can Weaken Iranian Regime, but Only Popular Uprising Can Overthrow It, Dissidents Say
Members of the police stand guard on a street, with a large billboard featuring Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the background, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani
A senior official from a Paris-based Iranian opposition group said on Thursday that the US-Israeli war on Iran would not topple the clerical leadership, arguing that only a popular uprising backed by internal resistance could do so.
Almost two weeks of bombing have killed around 2,000 people in Iran including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and damaged much of its military and security apparatus.
Iran has responded in kind, throwing global energy markets and transport into chaos and spreading the conflict across the Middle East, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has tightened its grip on power and threatened to crush any unrest.
“The 12-day war in June, and the current war, now in its 12th day, proved that bombings cannot overthrow the regime,” Mohammad Mohaddesin, head of foreign policy at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told a news conference.
“Even if you have 50,000 armed soldiers on the ground, you need the support of Iranian people. You need a popular uprising. The combination of this 50,000 or 20,000 or any other number with a popular uprising, then you have this power to overthrow the regime.”
Mohaddesin said he did not consider a deployment of US ground troops realistic.
The NCRI, also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq, was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States until 2012.
It is banned in Iran, and it is unclear how much support it has there. However, along with its bitter rival, the monarchists backing Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of the toppled shah, it is one of the few opposition groups able to rally supporters.
Mohaddesin acknowledged that his group alone could not bring down the system. But he said mass protests, like those that raged in January until they were bloodily quashed, would resume once bombing stopped, and could eventually shift the balance.
“I cannot say how many months or a year, but … this is the track of overthrowing the regime,” he said.
Israeli officials have said that one of their objectives is to weaken the security apparatus so that Iran‘s people can take control of their own destiny.
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Trump Says It Is Not Appropriate for Iran to Be in Soccer World Cup
Soccer Football – World Cup – Asian Qualifiers – Group A – Iran v North Korea – Azadi Stadium, Tehran, Iran – June 10, 2025, Iran players line up before the match. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday the Iranian men’s national soccer team was welcome to participate in the 2026 World Cup but that he believed it was not appropriate that they be there “for their own life and safety.”
“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Iran‘s sports minister said on Wednesday that it was not possible for his nation’s athletes to participate after the US launched airstrikes alongside Israel against Tehran. The attacks triggered a region-wide conflict that has shown no signs of abating.
The 48-team World Cup will be held in the US, Canada, and Mexico from June 11 to July 19, with Iran scheduled for matches in Los Angeles and Seattle.
An official withdrawal by Iran from the showpiece event, which has not yet happened, would be a first in the modern era and would leave soccer‘s global governing body FIFA with the urgent task of finding a replacement team.
Iran was the only nation missing from a FIFA planning summit for World Cup participants held last week in Atlanta.
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Late last year it awarded Trump — who has campaigned aggressively for the Nobel Peace Prize — its own inaugural peace prize.
Earlier this week, Australia granted humanitarian visas to five Iranian women soccer players after they sought asylum, fearing persecution on their return home for their refusal to sing the national anthem at an Asia Cup match.
Trump had urged Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to grant asylum to members of the Iranian women’s team, saying the US would if Australia did not.
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The New ‘Tokyo Roses’: How Social Media Influencers Amplify Authoritarian Propaganda
People stand near a destroyed vehicle as smoke rises after a reported strike on Shahran fuel tanks, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
At 04:38 on the morning of March 11, 2026, the alert blasted onto my phone: “Red Alert – Tel Aviv.”
Like millions of Israelis during the current war with Iran, my family and I moved quickly into our mamad — the reinforced safe room built into Israeli homes constructed after 1993 — grateful for the air-defense systems intercepting incoming missiles overhead.
Fifteen minutes later, the sirens stopped. I climbed back into bed.
That has become the rhythm of daily life here. Restaurants reopened. Businesses operate. Children move between Zoom classes and the occasional dash to a shelter when sirens sound.
But if you relied solely on social media — particularly X or TikTok — you might believe Tel Aviv had already been reduced to rubble.
Videos circulate claiming the city is burning and the electric grid destroyed. Posts declare Israel is collapsing under missile fire. Influencers insist the truth is being “censored.”
The problem is that this supposed “evidence” turns out to be fabricated, misrepresented, or recycled footage — often not even from Israel.
In other words: propaganda.
The tactic itself is not new.
During World War II, Allied soldiers in the Pacific heard English-language propaganda broadcasts from personalities collectively known as “Tokyo Rose.” Their purpose was to undermine morale, spread disinformation, and convince American troops their cause was hopeless.
The technology has changed, but the tactic hasn’t.
Today, the propaganda battlefield is on social media, and the new “Tokyo Roses” are often Western influencers with enormous audiences.
Consider the viral claims that Iran’s missile attacks have “devastated” Israel.
Several widely shared posts attempted to support this narrative with dramatic footage supposedly showing Iranian strikes on Israeli cities.
Basic fact-checking revealed something else: AI-generated fabrications or recycled clips from earlier events.
Repackaging old footage to fabricate a new narrative is one of the oldest tricks in propaganda. What has changed is the speed. In the social media age, recycled footage and fabricated videos spread globally in minutes, while corrections rarely travel as far as the original lie.
A similar pattern appeared recently when Putin- and Houthi-supporting influencer Jackson Hinkle circulated a video claiming to show massive crowds in Iran mourning the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei. Fact-checkers later identified the footage as coming from the 2020 funeral of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. By the time the clarification appeared, the misleading version had already spread widely across social media.
Other influencers have gone further by promoting narratives that closely mirror those pushed by authoritarian regimes.
Social media personality Myron Gaines recently argued that Iran “poses no real threat to the United States” and that the war should end because it is “Israel’s problem, not ours.”
But Iran’s regime has spent decades building precisely the opposite reality. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran has treated the United States as a principal enemy. Iranian leaders regularly chant “Death to America,” and Iran and its proxies have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American service members, including attacks in Beirut, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran has built a network of proxy militias across the Middle East — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.
These groups have launched thousands of rockets, drones, and missiles against America and its allies while Iran continues expanding its ballistic-missile arsenal and advancing toward nuclear-weapons capability.
This buildup also fits into the broader ambitions of the China-Russia-Iran axis, which seeks to weaken American global influence.
To describe such a regime as posing “no real threat” requires ignoring one of the most documented security challenges in modern geopolitics.
Unless one believes that the world — and especially the United States — would be freer or safer with China, Russia, and Iran ascendant, the stakes should be obvious.
In other cases, the rhetoric moves from distortion into outright antisemitic conspiracy.
Social media personality Dan Bilzerian has posted messages accusing Western leaders and the Muslim governments cooperating with Israel of “selling out” their people. His posts frequently invoke conspiratorial claims about hidden Jewish forces nefariously controlling Western governments.
These narratives mirror themes long promoted by state-controlled media in Iran and Russia.
Whether intentional or not, the effect is the same: Western audiences are fed narratives that erode trust in democratic institutions while portraying authoritarian regimes as misunderstood and even noble victims.
In some cases, the messaging goes further still.
Recent posts from Candace Owens, widely shared across social media, have encouraged Americans not to serve in the US military and urged those currently serving to quit, while framing the conflict through very dark and conspiratorial accusations about hidden motives to serve supposedly prurient and venal Jewish interests.
Messages designed to discourage military service during wartime have long been tools of psychological warfare. In the 1940s such efforts were broadcast over enemy radio. Today they appear in US based social media feeds.
None of this occurs in a vacuum.
For years the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has treated information warfare as a central element of its strategy. Iranian state media and proxy networks attempt to shape global narratives by portraying the Islamic Republic as a victim while depicting Israel and the United States as degenerate and corrupt aggressors.
These campaigns rely on familiar tactics: recycled footage, conspiracy narratives, and emotionally charged messaging designed to spread rapidly online. What makes the modern environment different is that these narratives no longer need to originate inside Iran to reach Western audiences. Influencers with large followings amplify them instantly.
The propaganda circulating online often revives and relies on something far older than modern geopolitics: classic antisemitic tropes.
Many viral posts go far beyond criticism of US or Israeli policy. They invoke conspiracies about Jewish control of governments, repeat blood-libel accusations, and frame global events as the result of a shrouded Jewish plot.
Versions of these accusations have circulated for centuries. What is striking today is how seamlessly these myths have merged with contemporary geopolitical propaganda.
Authoritarian regimes hostile to Israel have long understood that antisemitic narratives can serve as powerful mobilizing tools. Portraying Israel as the center of a global conspiracy transforms a regional conflict into an ideological crusade.
When influencers with large Western audiences repeat these themes, they normalize ideas that have historically fueled violence against Jews.
The modern “Tokyo Rose” no longer sits behind a microphone in an enemy capital. He or she posts on social media.
The voices spreading propaganda today are influencers with millions of Western followers — many living safely and prosperously inside the democratic societies whose resolve they undermine. Some claim they are offering contrarian commentary. Others are motivated by attention or the financial rewards of viral outrage.
But the effect is the same: narratives promoted by authoritarian regimes are amplified to vast audiences, often stripped of context, facts, or accountability.
Meanwhile here in Tel Aviv, life continues between missile alerts. Millions of Israelis move between normal routines and red-alert interruptions as air defenses intercept incoming missiles. But it bears little resemblance to the apocalyptic fantasies circulating online.
That contrast — between lived reality and digital narrative — reveals something important about modern information warfare.
Propaganda no longer requires governments to broadcast lies. It only requires enough people willing to repeat them — and in the age of social media, there are always volunteers.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.