Herzog College has opened its first English-language Master’s degree in Teaching Tanakh & Parshanut, with the opening online lecture given by Dr. Yael Ziegler.
The Chumash and Navi courses will focus on how to teach Sefer Shemot, David HaMelech, Yechezkel, Shivat Tzion and Hassidut. The Education and Pedagogy courses will include Parshanut, Ethics & Morals, Intrinsic Motivation, and Student-Centered Learning. There will also be two courses geared towards writing a Master’s seminar paper.
For over 30 years, Tanakh has been the flagship educational degree program at Herzog College, training thousands of teachers for Israel’s religious schools. Our Master’s degree in Teaching Tanakh and Parshanut takes this program to a higher level for teachers in Israel and around the world, raising the standard of professional learning in the topic central to Judaic studies in educational institutions around the world.
Students in the new English online M.A. program will study passages from the Tanakh, expand their knowledge of its many classical interpretations, and explore opportunities for engaging multidisciplinary teaching. The program will combine traditional commentaries with new study methods, modern research and interpretative tools, while retaining an authentic religious Jewish commitment to the Torah text. During the first year of the program, courses will focus on exploring connections between the Biblical text and other Jewish traditional sources and developing pedagogy skills. During the summer program and second year courses, they will develop techniques for interpreting, researching and teaching the Tanakh and its commentaries.
The English program is led by Rabbi Reuven Spolter, who explains: “Teaching Tanakh today is a multi-disciplinary endeavor, exploring Biblical verses and their commentaries drawn from multiple sources including Talmud, Midrash and Halachic literature. The Herzog approach to the study of Tanakh involves literary analysis of every chapter, understanding its historical context, the places where its events took place, and its philosophical messages. Interpretations of Biblical stories can also be examined through engagement with contemporary literature, poetry, art, cinema and theater”.
The online course in English runs alongside the Hebrew-language Master’s course taught in Jerusalem, and the College hopes to soon open a similar online MA degree in Spanish for Jewish teachers in Latin American schools.