Photo by Paula Lerner

They are attorneys, university professors, Jewish educators, an architect, an international banker and graduate students fresh out of college. They come from as near as Greater Boston and as far away as New Mexico and Panama. They are the ten men and ten women, ages 23 to 61, with diverse backgrounds and beliefs, who comprise the first class of students creating the klal Yisrael community of Hebrew College's new Rabbinical School.

Orientation and a special opening day class will be held on September 2. But the community building that is central to the Rabbinical School's mission starts a week earlier, on August 26, with an evening class taught by Dean Arthur Green on teshuvah, in preparation for the month of Elul and the High Holidays. That sense of community will be strengthened when students and their families celebrate Shabbat together on September 12–13 at a campus retreat.

"When they graduate, our rabbis will be community builders," says Green. "We want the Rabbinical School to be a model of the type of community our graduates will serve and help to create in their new positions."

Formal classes begin on September 3. Green says the five-year, full-time Rabbinical School curriculum is built on three pillars: mastery of classical studies, Hebrew language and religious traditions; spiritual growth and the development of a personal theology; and proficiency in professional skills, ranging from counseling to management. In their first year, rabbinical students will focus on the theme of prayer. The core curriculum includes intensive study of the Talmud tractate on prayer, the history of Jewish liturgy and contemporary meanings of Jewish prayers. Students in the Mekhinah program will focus on Hebrew language mastery and preparation for the study of rabbinic texts.

Green, who holds the title of Visiting Professor of Jewish Mysticism at Hebrew College, is the Philip W. Lown Professor of Jewish Thought at Brandeis University. He will divide his time between his deanship at Hebrew College and his faculty commitments at Brandeis. Other Rabbinical School personnel include Rabbi Carol Glass, Dean of Students; Dr. Jonah Steinberg, Assistant Professor of Rabbinics and Director of Talmudic Studies; members of the Hebrew College faculty, including Dr. Nehemia Polen, Professor of Jewish Thought, and Dr. Judith Kates, Professor of Jewish Women's Studies; Rabbi Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld; and Ebn Leader and Or Rose, Beit Midrash instructors.

For more information about Hebrew College's Rabbinical School and applying for the 2004–2005 academic year, please contact the Office of Admissions, 617-559-8610; admissions@hebrewcollege.edu.

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