AOP Israel and Palestine Program

Addressing the neshamah and the engaged mind, we have created an educational experience that will enrich our days, our dreams, and our spiritual practice -– that will be both on-the-ground-real and transformative. We will equip emerging and current spiritual leaders committed to Jewish Renewal with knowledge and skills to build capacity for holding complex and diverse viewpoints, while nurturing hope and intellectual-spiritual growth.

Day: Monday, 8pm EST
(class sessions are typically 2 hours and meet for 13 weeks.)

Prerequisites: None

Course curriculum: History, one unit of AOP credit credit.

This video-conference course delves into the rich cultural and religious diversity of human expression in Israel and Palestine through literature, poetry, film, music, art, foodways, liturgy, theology and prayer communities. The focus will be on contemporary ferment and will treat such themes as Land and Desire, Rituals of Memory and Home, Trauma and Healing, the interplay of languages and voices, as well as spiritual renewal and the rhythms of daily life.

Prerequisites: Journey through the Histories of Israel and Palestine (Fall Semester 2017)

Course curriculum: One unit of AOP credit may be applied to either the Jewish Thought/Philosophy or the Kli Kodesh categories.

Cost: Full semester at the regular Spring 2018 course fee of $1030 per course.

Based in Jerusalem, this three-week immersion will extend themes from the fall and spring courses, deepening our 4-Worlds study with experiential on-site learning. There will be concentrated Beit Midrash time for deep, joyous Torah-study with face-to-face sharing and integration. Students will encounter the Land, experience the rhythms of Time both sacred and secular, meet with diverse people, performers, organizations, and communities, and draw out ‘Torah-of-the-everyday’ through these embodied experiences and observations. Throughout this course, we will grapple with Israel and Palestine in ways that acknowledge multiple and sometimes competing perspectives. Our aim, with humility and courage, is to keep our eyes and hearts open.

The 22 days of this experience span three particularly powerful weeks in the arc of the Jewish year, and are purposefully chosen in order to allow us to enter the mystical and emotional rhythms of these days, moving from the eve of Tisha B’Av through the dance of Tu B’Av and rising up towards the threshold of Ellul. 22 days – in gematriya נגילה ונשמחה ב"ך – we will rejoice and delight in these 22. 

Instructors: Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg and Rabbi Minna Bromberg with an array of stellar teachers, artists, visionaries, tour-guides and speakers including Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan, Melila Hellner-Eshed, Palestinian partners, and more...

Prerequisites: Journey Through the Histories of Israel and Palestine (Fall 2017) and The Dream of Place: Contemporary Culture in Israel and Palestine (Spring 2018)

Course curriculum: 3 AOP unit credits may be earned for the ALEPH Ba'Aretz which includes the Pre-OHALAH Integration Seminar (January 2019). Credits can be applied in history, rabbinics, kabbalah-hasidut, and kil kodesh. 

Cost: $4200 per person (not including airfare, based on double occupancy in Jerusalem). Please email Jamie Polliard at Israel@aleph.org if you have any questions about housing.

Registration: Registration will be open on April 3, 2017. A deposit of $1000 is required to secure your space. Payment in full is due no later than June 30, 2018. Payment plans are available. Please complete the pre-qualification form and we will be in touch with next steps!

This program requires a minimum registration of 12 participants by July 16, 2017. Maximum enrollment is 18 so SPACE IS LIMITED! Should the program not meet the required number of participants by July 16, all deposits will be returned.

Full semester course at the regular AOP course fee of $1030 per course. Registration for this course opens April 2, 2017.

Full semester at the regular AOP course fee of $1030 per course.

$4200 per person (not including airfare, based on double occupancy in Jerusalem). Please email Jamie Polliard at Israel@aleph.org if you have any questions about housing.

Registration will be open on April 3, 2017. A deposit of $1000 is required to secure your space. Payment in full is due no later than June 30, 2018. Payment plans are available. Complete our pre-qualification form and we will be in touch with next steps for registration. 

This program requires a minimum registration of 12 participants by July 16, 2017. Maximum enrollment is 18 so SPACE IS LIMITED! Should the program not meet the required number of participants by July 16, all deposits will be returned.

Costs for this program are included in the program fee for the ALEPH Ba'Aretz Program. Students will be responsible for covering their housing/hotel expenses. Hotel rooms will be available at the OHALAH hotel at the discounted conference rate.

Note: While this face-to-face Seminar is a required part of our ALEPH Ba'Aretz Program, we will work to accommodate those AOP hashpa’ah students who are participating in the pre-OHALAH hashpa’ah intensive, so that they too will benefit from our integrative work.

This 2 ½ day seminar led by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, co-director of Resetting the Table, will enable students to reflect on their experience, and develop facilitation and leadership skills to bring back to their communities. Melissa is a noted educator who trains leaders and builds programs at the intersections of Israel, Jewish thought, and conflict resolution. She was the founding director of Encounter, an organization dedicated to strengthening the capacity of the Jewish people to be agents of change in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Note: While this face-to-face Seminar is a required part of our ALEPH Ba-Aretz Program, we will work to accommodate those AOP hashpa’ah students who are participating in the pre-OHALAH hashpa’ah intensive, so that they too will benefit from our integrative work.

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan is Director of Inter-Religious Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology and a core faculty member at AOP. Laura is an award-winning teacher who weaves student participation into intellectually rigorous, spiritually uplifting, and emotionally moving classes. She has organized topical conferences on the philosophy of peace and inter-religious dialogue, leading to her co-edited anthologies Encountering the Other; Philosophical Perspectives on Power and Domination; and Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace. In her book Family Pictures: A Philosopher Explores the Familiar, she models a life of inquiry and rigorous self-reflection. As the only Jewish faculty member at an ecumenical Christian seminary, Laura understands the challenge of living within two narratives. She hopes to apply and deepen that understanding through her work in the AOP Israel and Palestine program. Laura is also Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a former Carnegie Foundation U.S. Professor of the Year (2001). Laura received her Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, rabbinic smicha from ALEPH, and diploma in Spiritual Direction from VST. She lives in Vancouver, Canada with her spouse and musical partner Charles Kaplan, their multiple companion animals, and (a few streets away) their young adult children.

Minna Bromberg is a rabbi, singer, songwriter, and voice teacher. Since 2014, she has served as Coordinator of the Year-in-Israel Program for Hebrew College. In this capacity, Minna is passionate about providing rabbinical students with both the container and the tools with which to make their own meaning from their time in Israel, continually returning to the question of how “Torah emerges from Zion.” This focus on personal and spiritual meaning-making dovetails with her work as a voice teacher who specializes in helping daveners find their own most authentic voices. Minna received her PhD in sociology from Northwestern University where her dissertation focused on identity construction in interfaith couples. She was ordained in the third cohort of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. Minna lives in Jerusalem with her husband, Rabbi Alan Abrams, and their daughter. Additional information on her work can be found here: http://minnabromberg.com/

Rabbi, poet, master midrashist and deep ecumenist, Rabah Tamar is the founder and inspiring muse of Kehillat Tziyyon in Jerusalem, a pluralist spiritual community that weaves together neo-hasidic, Mizrahi and Eretz Yisraeli modes of song, Torah-teaching and spiritual practice. With eyes and heart open, Tamar nurtures sparks of hope and connection across the Jewish religious-political spectrum, and fosters prayerful meetings between Muslims, Christians and Jews. A quietly glowing presence, Tamar is on the faculty of the new pluralist rabbinic training program founded by Midreshet Oranim and the Hartman Institute. Additional information about this program can be found at https://hartman.org.il. Tamar will share moments in her own spiritual journey with us, as well as her vision of the spiritual work needed in this hour and place. To learn more about Rabbi Elad-Applebaum, read a recent profile in Tablet Magazine, "Israeli Rabbis You Should Know."   

Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed is one of the world’s leading scholars and teachers of Zohar, kabbalah and Jewish mystical traditions. Her book, A River Flows through Eden, is prized by many of us in ALEPH, as an amazing guide to the intricacies of the Zohar. She teaches at Hebrew University, at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and Institute of Jewish Spirituality. A loving and deep guide to many klei kodesh in Israel, North America and beyond, Melila is also one of the central movers in the Sulha project, a reconciliation project that brings together Israelis and Palestinians often through shared ritual. At once earthy and high-flying, Melila is frequent pilgrim to India. She is a teacher who transforms lives. We are thrilled to be learning in depth with Melila as she will be one of our core beit midrash teachers. Additional information on her work and teaching can be found at Hartman.org.il and on YouTube.

Rabbi Kagan, who prefers to be called Rabbi Ruth, is a spiritual pathblazer, a mashpi’ah ruhanit (spiritual director) of rare and direct wisdom, and the founding rabbi of Nava Tehila, Israel’s premier Renewal community. Ruth is a heart-centered and innovative teacher, who not only drinks deep from the textual sources but one who is open to the flow of spirit through many worlds and modalities: music, meditation, healing, textuality, and the holiness of relationship. Ruth will be one of our core beit midrash teachers. She is one of only six people given a special (second) “rebbe” smicha by Reb Zalman. In 2006 she published, together with Reb Zalman, Jewish Renewal: Integrating Heart and World (Kirvat Elohim, Yediot Achronot), the first book in Hebrew describing the principles and practice of Jewish Renewal for Israeli readership. Additional information on Rabbi Ruth can be found at www.navatehila.org. 

Ali is a leading Palestinian activist tirelessly teaching the life-changing power of nonviolent resistance and reaching out to Jewish Israelis at the heart of the conflict. He is currently finishing his memoir called Painful Hope, an account of his experiences, strategy, and vision for the Palestinian future. In addition to being one of the founders of Roots/Shorashim/Judur, he was recently instrumental in the founding of Taghyeer (Change): The Palestinian National Movement for Nonviolent Resistance. To meet with Ali and his Roots/Shorashim partners is to be radically stretched by the possibility of possibility. In the words of Melila Hellner-Eshed, “the divine presence radiates from Ali Abu Awwad.” We will be spending an extended afternoon with him, part of a series of meetings with Palestinians both in the West Bank and Israel proper, and with settlers inspired by transformative vision of the late Rabbi Menachem Froman. Learn more about Ali Abu Awwad and Roots/Shorashim/Judur at www.friendsofroots.net.

Dr. Raviv is an eloquent and impassioned educator, committed to dialogue across difference. Born in Teheran, educated in Israel and the U.S., he is fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and English. He is a scholar of both the Shoah and Jewish Mysticism who has taught at Oberlin College, Brandeis and Alma Institute in Tel Aviv, among other places. Zohar is an expert in regards to ‘in situ’ learning. He was given his name by his grandfather, heir to the kabbalistic tradition, who presciently saw in his just-emerged grandson, a rare spark of light. We will be learning with Zohar as part of our hiloni-ruhani shabbat in Tel Aviv. 

The program fee is based on double occupancy. Rooms are fully furnished with access to a community kitchen and free WIFI. Traditional Israeli breakfast is provided as part of housing costs.

Please email Jamie Polliard, Program Coordinator at Israel@aleph.org with any questions about housing for the ALEPH Ba'Aretz Program.

ALEPH is excited to be working with Religious Travel International in helping participants make travel arrangements, research travel insurance or answer any travel related questions:

Jane Luzietti
Owner & Managing Director
Religious Travel International
Direct: 303-563-6261 650
South Cherry Street,
Suite 200
Denver, Colorado 80246
www.rtijourneys.com

Couldn't make it for one of our online sessions? Learn more about the vision, goals and details of Beloved Land by viewing our information session, recorded Sunday, April 23.

We are thrilled by the energy, passion and richness students, alumni and Ohalah members are already bringing to this unique course. Learning together and development of community has already begun, please join us! Email Israel@aleph.org with questions or to register.