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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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Nearly Half of Jewish Students Report Experiencing Antisemitism on US College Campuses, Survey Finds
A student puts on their anti-Israel graduation cap reading “From the river to the sea” at the People’s Graduation, hosted for Mahmoud Khalil and other students from New York University. Photo: Angelina Katsanis via Reuters Connect
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to new survey results released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety.
The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism.
Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
“No Jewish student should have to hide their identity out of fear of antisemitism, yet that’s the reality for too many students today,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our work on the ground every day is focused on changing that reality by creating environments where all Jewish students can find welcoming communities and can fully and proudly express their Jewish identities without fear or concern.”
The survey, included in AJC’s new “The State of Antisemitism in America” report, added that 32 percent of Jewish students feel that campus groups promote antisemitism or a learning environment that is hostile to Jews, while 25 percent said that antisemitism was the basis of their being “excluded from a group or an event on campus.”
Jewish students endure these indignities while preserving their overwhelming support for Israel. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed identified caring about Israel as a central component of Jewish identity and 76 percent agreed that calling for its destruction or describing it as an illegitimate state is antisemitic.
“While we welcome the fact that the vast majority of campuses have not been disrupted by uncontrolled protests in the past year, the data make clear that Jewish students are still experiencing antisemitism on their campuses,” Laura Shaw Frank, the AJC’s vice president of its Center for Education Advocacy, said in a statement. “This survey gives us a critical look into the less visible, but no less important problems, that Jews face on campus.”
She continued, “Understanding the ways in which Jews are being excluded and changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism is vitally important as we work with institutions of higher education to create truly inclusive campus communities.”
The AJC and Hillel’s survey results are consistent with others in which Jewish students have participated in recent months.
According, to a recent survey of Jewish undergraduates of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), a significant portion of Jewish students still find the climate on campus to be hostile and feel the need to hide their identity over two years after the campus saw an explosion of extreme anti-Zionist activity and Nazi graffiti.
The survey, conducted by Penn’s local Hillel International chapter, found that 40 percent of respondents said it is difficult to be Jewish at Penn and 45 percent said they “feel uncomfortable or intimidated because of their Jewish identity or relationship with Israel.”
Meanwhile, the results showed a staggering 85 percent of survey participants reported hearing about, witnessing, or experiencing “something antisemitic,” as reported by Franklin’s Forum, an alumni-led online outlet which posts newsletters regarding developments at the university. Another 31 percent of Jewish Penn students said they feel the need to hide their Jewishness to avoid discrimination, which is sometimes present in the classroom, as 26 percent of respondents said they have “experienced antisemitic or anti-Israel comments from professors.”
Overall, 80 percent of Jewish students hold that anti-Israel activity is “often” antisemitic and that Israel’s conduct in war is “held to an unfair standard compared to other nations.”
College faculty play an outsized role in promoting antisemitism on the campus, according to a new study by AMCHA Initiative which focused on the University of California system. The study, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California,” exposed Oct 7 denialism; faculty calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; the founding of pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups; and hundreds of endorsers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism across the US, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report stated. “It shows how those pathways are associated with recurring student harms and broader campus disruption. It then outlines concrete steps the UC Regents can take to restore institutional neutrality in academic units and set enforceable boundaries so UC resources and authority are not used to advance activist agendas inside the university’s core educational functions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Forverts podcast, episode 6: At-risk languages
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם זעקסטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה“. אין דעם קאַפּיטל לייענט שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר אַן אַרטיקל פֿונעם ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט דזשייק שנײַדער, „וואָס אַקטיוויסטן פֿאַר שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה קענען זיך אָפּלערנען איינער פֿונעם אַנדערן.“
צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
אויב איר ווילט אויך לייענען דעם געדרוקטן טעקסט פֿונעם אַרטיקל, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ און קוקט אונטן בײַם סוף פֿון דער זײַט.
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An audiobook narrator told Zionists to kill themselves. A popular romance novelist hired him anyway.
A bestselling romance novelist is facing backlash from her Jewish readers after hiring an audiobook narrator who previously posted on social media telling Zionists to kill themselves.
Abby Jimenez’s novel The Night We Met, set to be published next month, features voice actor Zachary Webber as the narrator of the audiobook.
“If you’re a Zionist and you exist, you should not do that anymore,” Webber posted on his Instagram story in September 2024. “No one likes you and you suck, and go f—cking kill yourself.”
Webber later apologized on Instagram, writing that his comment was “a poorly-worded joke aimed at a violent settler-colonialist enterprise. I regret any language that suggested otherwise. Fortunately, my anti-Zionist Jewish friends understood it was a joke, and moved on with their beautiful lives.” He did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
Webber, who has a low, gravelly voice and sums up his job as “I READ SEX,” has narrated more than 250 steamy audiobooks, including eight of Jimenez’s. But amid backlash over Webber’s social media comments, Jimenez originally said she would go in a different direction for the audio narration of The Night We Met, a novel about forbidden love between two best friends.
But earlier this month, Jimenez changed her mind.
“I know I mentioned that I was going with a male voice actor that I’ve never used before, but I’m going to be really honest with you — the fit wasn’t right,” Jimenez posted in her private readers Facebook group. “We did a day of recording and he just wasn’t Chris. All I could think the whole time was how perfectly Zachary would have captured the tone and personality of this character and at the end of recording Day One, I made the choice to change narrators.”
Several readers commented in the Facebook group expressing concern about Webber. But those comments were removed, with Jimenez citing group rules against “political or negative conversations.” She added that she did not “want to be forced to leave to protect my mental health. I cannot go to a comment section to see vitriol, even if it’s vitriol I happen to agree with.”
Neither Jimenez’s literary agent nor Hachette Book Group, the publisher of The Night We Met, responded to the Forward’s request for comment.
The backlash among Jimenez’s readers represents the latest flare-up over Israel in progressive-coded subcultures, from knitting circles to vegan cooking. The romance publishing world, consistently the top-grossing genre in adult fiction, has not been immune: Other recent flashpoints have included boycotts of authors labeled “Zionist” and the decision by SteamyLitCon, a romance book convention, to remove Israeli-born author Michelle Mars from its lineup last year over social media posts organizers said were “anti-Palestinian.”
“It just made me really sad about the state of the industry,” said Chayla Wolfberg, a Jewish author and former fan of Jimenez’s books. “There’s a lot of obviously very complicated things when it comes to engaging with criticism of Israel. And what [Webber] was doing wasn’t that.”
Happily ever after?

Romance publishing has spent the past few decades broadening its vision of who gets a love story — elevating LGBTQ+ narratives, highlighting authors and characters of color, and celebrating diverse body types. But some Jewish writers and readers say they have been excluded from that push.
The lack of Jewish representation in romance was part of what inspired 27-year-old Wolfberg to self-publish Late Night Love, a Saturday Night Live-inspired enemies-to-lovers rom-com featuring a Jewish protagonist. Too often, Wolfberg said, Jewish characters only appear in stories defined by trauma and suffering.
Romance, by contrast, is governed by two nonnegotiable rules: The story must center on a developing romantic relationship, and the conclusion must be emotionally satisfying — the genre’s trademark “happily ever after” (HEA), or at least “happy for now” (HFN). When it comes to Jewish storytelling, Wolfberg said, that structure can feel subversive.
But Wolfberg didn’t feel accepted by the broader romance book community. When she promoted her work online, viewers commented that she was a Zionist and thus shouldn’t support her book.
“It is a radical thing, especially if you are from a historically oppressed or a minority community, to be writing a story that has a happy ending and isn’t just about suffering,” Wolfberg said. “But I think that is where anti-Zionism unfortunately creeps in, in the way that it has become part of the lexicon for people who are anti-oppression.”
Wolfberg has instead found support mostly among other Jewish authors. She said her next book will feature a character who has family in Israel — even though she’s aware that aspect could make it a tough sell.
Meanwhile, popular romance authors whose books have nothing to do with Judaism or Israel have also been targeted.
In a 2015 interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Sarah J. Maas, author of the massively popular A Court of Thorns and Roses series, mentioned going on a Birthright trip to Israel. Maas said she “left Israel overflowing with pride,” and described the country as “a magical, welcoming place.” Nearly a decade later, those comments landed her on the X account Zionists in Publishing, which points out Zionist authors to boycott.
Rebecca Yarros, author of the bestselling romantasy series Empyrean, appeared on a similar account that exposes Zionist authors. Her offense? Posting on Oct. 15, 2023, that “children are not collateral damage” and that she was “horrified by the despicable attack on Israel” and “terrified for the children and Palestinian innocents in Gaza.”
The extent to which those blacklists actually impact sales is unclear; both Yarros and Maas have sold millions of copies.
But it’s still a dynamic Jewish romance enthusiasts would prefer to avoid. In response, they’ve carved out their own spaces: Author Jean Meltzer, who writes Jewish rom-coms such as The Matzah Ball and Kissing Kosher, runs a Facebook group called “Jewish Women Talk About Romance Books,” which has 3,300 members. There, women discuss books they read as part of the The Jewish Joy Book Club, which has one rule: “We read books where nobody dies at the end.”
The need for a Jewish space in the romance genre was also evident to Gillian Geller, a 35-year–old in Toronto, Canada, who used to run a book blog focused on all kinds of novels, with a focus on romance. But after Oct. 7, she shifted to spotlighting Jewish books.
For her, Jimenez’s decision to rehire Webber is another example of how Jewish authors and readers have been excluded from a genre that is otherwise increasingly sensitive to inclusion.
“I felt like if I wasn’t stepping up to help promote these books,” she said, “then nobody else would.”
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