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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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Years of Ignored Antisemitism Led to Terror in Australia — and the Media Helped Normalize It
Mourners carry the casket of 10-year-old Matilda the youngest victim of a mass shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach targeting an event for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday, at Chevra Kadisha Memorial Hall, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Years of hatred and antisemitism that was swept aside or outright denied led to one of the most horrific attacks on the Jewish people in Australia.
The warning signs were unmistakable more than two years ago: chants of “gas the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House days after October 7; “Jew die” graffiti scrawled outside a Jewish school; a synagogue firebombed; and a Jewish community that made clear, again and again, that it did not feel safe or protected.
A terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community should not be what it takes for the world to pay attention to the undeniable rise in antisemitism.
And yet, even now, it appears that many are still unwilling to acknowledge the attack was antisemitic.
Despite the terrorists specifically aiming at the crowd gathered at the Hanukkah event, there was initial reluctance to name the Jewish community as the target.
Rather, the attack was framed in vague terms as part of a broader act of violence and a public safety issue in Australia. This reluctance to call out antisemitism is not incidental, but part of the pattern that allowed it to foster unchecked for so long.
As the news coverage on the attack continued, outlets slowly started to shift the story away from the victims of the attack and towards the terrorists who carried it out.
While understanding the motive and background has a place in responsible reporting, many outlets instead crossed a dangerous line by subtly humanizing the perpetrators while sidelining the Jewish victims.
1/
How terrorists who murder Jews are quietly humanized in media coverage.
Not through praise – but through framing, emphasis, and omission.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. pic.twitter.com/nOuZM0ni7V
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 16, 2025
One headline in Newsweek focused on the attacker’s relationship with his family, quoting that his mother considered him a “good boy.” But what his mother thought of him before the attack should not have been headline news — the fact that he took part in mass murdering people at a Hanukkah event should have.
The pain and trauma of the victims’ families and survivors deserved the center of the story, rather than emotional character references for the terrorist.
The Irish Times similarly stressed the terrorists had no criminal background, omitting their ISIS-inspired ideology and once again framing them as ordinary, well-meaning people.
2/
Let’s start with this headline from @Newsweek:
“Mom of Bondi terror attack suspect says he was a ‘good boy’”Pause on that.
This is not context. It’s emotional laundering – shifting attention from victims to the feelings of the terrorist’s family. pic.twitter.com/vquSod2nM3
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 16, 2025
The BBC likewise whitewashed the crimes of the terrorists by refusing to call them terrorists at all. Instead, they were described merely as “gunmen,” a term so sanitized that readers would have no idea from the headline that they carried out a deadly attack on Jews.
3/
Humanization also shows up in language choices.“Terrorists” become gunmen. “Murder” becomes an incident. A mass-casualty attack on Jews becomes something that “happened at Bondi Beach.”
This @bbc headline doesn’t even tell readers that people were killed. pic.twitter.com/wPelNy8Aov
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 16, 2025
Meanwhile, Sky News shifted the focus from the Jewish victims to warn that Muslims in Australia may feel unsafe. This creates a moral inversion that recasts the aftermath of an antisemitic terror attack as a story about the potential discomfort of an entirely different community.
This inversion completes a familiar pattern where Jewish victims disappear, antisemitism becomes abstract, and the media moves on without ever confronting the hatred that made the attack possible.
Jews are massacred in an Islamist terror attack.@SkyNews’ response: bring on an imam to warn that Muslims may now feel unsafe.
Victims erased.
Violence inverted.
Sympathy redirected away from the dead. pic.twitter.com/K78sZtWbuX— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 17, 2025
When explicit calls to murder Jews are dismissed as isolated incidents, when attacks on Jewish institutions are minimized, and when Jewish fear is treated as political exaggeration, violence becomes inevitable. A terrorist attack against Jews in Australia is the consequence of sustained denial, indifference, and moral failure. The minimization of antisemitic incidents and violence against the Jewish people in the media contributes to the vicious cycle.
Antisemitism does not begin with terror attacks. It begins when warning signs are ignored — and it will continue until institutions, leaders, and the media are willing to say clearly and unequivocally that Jews were targeted because they are Jews.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Palestinian Terrorist Was Killed Throwing Grenades; PA Said He Was ‘Young Boy’ ‘Delivering a Package’
Illustrative: Palestinian demonstrators call for an end to clashes between Palestinian security forces and militants in Jenin, in the West Bank, Dec. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues its hypocrisy about terrorists who are killed trying to murder Jews.
The “successful” terrorists are coined heroic fighters, and the PA names schools, streets, and squares after them.
But if they are young terrorists and the PA wants the world to condemn Israel, they are repackaged as innocent victims.
Such was the case of 16-year-old Islamic Jihad terrorist Muhammad Iyad Abahreh, who was killed after throwing hand grenades at Israeli soldiers near Jenin.
Text on picture:
“Martyr Jihad fighter
Muhammad Iyad Abahreh
One of the Jihad fighters of the Al-Quds Brigades, Al-Yamun Brigade
Al-Quds Brigades – Military Media”
Islamic Jihad’s terror wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, openly lauded Abahreh as one of its fighters.
The group proudly described him as a “Jihad fighter,” declared that he died as a “Martyr,” and vowed to continue armed resistance:
Headline: “The Al-Quds Brigades accompany to his wedding Martyr Muhammad Abahreh from Jenin”
“The Al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine’s military wing, accompanied to his wedding [i.e., a Martyr’s funeral is considered his wedding to the 72 Virgins in Paradise in Islam] Martyr Muhammad Iyad Abahreh …
In a statement on Sunday, [Dec. 14, 2025,] the brigades said that Abahreh is one of the Jihad fighters of the Al-Yamun Brigade and that he ascended to Heaven as a Martyr after he managed to engage with the occupation [i.e., Israeli] soldiers and threw several hand grenades at them during an invasion of the town of Silat Al-Harithiya yesterday evening, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025.
The brigades emphasized that they will remain steadfast on the path of Jihad and resistance until liberation and return.”
[Safa, independent Palestinian news agency, Dec. 14, 2025]
Just one day later, the Palestinian Authority’s official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, published a fabricated version of the attack.
The “Jihad fighter” became a “young boy,” the grenade attack was erased, Islamic Jihad was not mentioned, and Israeli soldiers were accused of killing him while he was “delivering a package.”
Abahreh was painted as a “loved, diligent, seeker of knowledge” whose “death as a Martyr halted his aspirations” to graduate high school and help his parents.
Headline: “Young Muhammad Abahreh”
“Al-Yamun and Silat Al-Harithiya, west of Jenin, were partners in grief two nights ago, Saturday, [Dec. 13, 2025]. The two neighboring towns mourned 16-year-old boy Muhammad Iyad Muhammad Abahreh, who ascended to Heaven in Silat Al-Harithiya, and the occupation seized his body…
Family sources told Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that young Abahreh is the eldest [child] in the family and that he was looking forward to finishing his experimental matriculation exams, but the occupation’s bullets changed the course of his dreams.
They noted that Muhammad was on his motorcycle on his way to deliver a package in nearby Silat Al-Harithiya, but the occupation soldiers shot him with six bullets and seized his body…
Al-Yamun High School Principal Radwan Freihat described the loss experienced by the school with Muhammad’s death … who was loved, diligent, and a seeker of knowledge. He said that his death as a Martyr halted his aspirations to earn a high [school graduation] certificate to help his parents.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 15, 2025]
The Palestinian Authority routinely rewrites terrorist attacks to demonize Israel and mislead international audiences and donors.
It did this just a month ago after terrorists from its own ruling party murdered Aharon Cohen and injured three others. The PA denies the October 7 atrocities. And it lies to world leaders about condemning terrorism and antisemitism.
Itamar Marcus is Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)’s Founder and Director. Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
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Foreign Press Correspondents Honored Terrorists, Awarded Al Jazeera Cash Grant
The Al Jazeera Media Network logo is seen on its headquarters building in Doha, Qatar, June 8, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon
The Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents USA bestowed honors on some of America’s most distinguished journalists at its gala in Washington, D.C., including veteran NBC journalist Andrea Mitchell.
Yet the same organization also chose to bestow posthumous honors on individuals later exposed as active terrorists who had worked as “journalists” for Al Jazeera, the Qatari state broadcaster and a co-sponsor of the event.
The channel itself was even awarded the association’s so-called “press freedom grant.”
An elite American press organization is honoring Hamas terrorists. That’s according to an astonishing scoop by @HonestReporting’s @Gil_Hoffman on a December 4 gala held by the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the U.S., the self-described “leading independent… pic.twitter.com/itH7gxX4W9
— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) December 8, 2025
According to a dinner attendee, the ceremony included a moment of silence for 10 Al Jazeera reporters and media workers killed in Gaza while “covering the Palestinian conflict with Israel,” with their photos displayed at a memorial table — a disturbing imitation of the empty hostage tables used to honor Israelis kidnapped by Hamas.
During the event, Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst used his acceptance speech to eulogize Gazan reporters. He criticized Israel for restricting independent journalistic access to Gaza, while omitting a crucial fact: Hamas routinely threatens, censors, and kills journalists, while selectively protecting cooperative reporters who comply with its messaging.
Yingst praised the “fearless and tenacious Palestinian journalists in Gaza who don’t have the luxury to leave when reporting becomes too dangerous,” adding after applause: “May we not forget their sacrifice and contributions to our industry.”
Since these “contributions” went unnamed, they deserve documenting.
Western press have eaten up Al Jazeera *cough* Hamas propaganda over Anas al-Sharif’s elimination by the IDF.
Here’s a
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 12, 2025
By memorializing known terror operatives and rewarding a propaganda outlet, the Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents USA transformed what should have been a celebration of journalistic integrity into a moral failure.
This was not an act of solidarity with journalism — it was the elevation of militants masquerading as reporters.
The author is the Executive Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.