The Beit Midrash for training a senior state rabbinate in Israel

Vision

The Beit Midrash for municipal rabbis is striving to create a framework that will accompany young rabbinical students through a process that will qualify them for the municipal rabbinate, while also preparing them for the many diverse aspects of this role, developing and enhancing its broad meaning within contemporary Israeli reality, and especially in light of the new reforms regarding state and religion in Israel.

Activity

The Beit Midrash is based on a combination of three main anchors:

Two years of study to obtain the qualification to become a municipal rabbi.
The main source of the program’s inspiration will be the halakha and leadership of the Sephardi Sages in recent generations, including the culture and Jewish study of the Golden Age of Sephardi Jewry – a rich and harmonious spiritual and Torah-oriented world that embraces the notion of broad Jewish studies together with other worlds of rich and diverse knowledge and scholarship.
Alongside the advanced halachic studies, there will be study on many tangential areas relating to the work and image of the ‘Complete Sage’, including family and civil mediation, the basics of social work, public policy, rhetoric and the art of speaking, the history of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry, philosophy and Jewish thinking, community leadership, community building, and more.

“Community is society with a human face, the place where we know we are not alone.”

- Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Z"L

Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Ben David

The Institute for the Training of Municipal Rabbis is headed by Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Ben David.

Rabbi Ben David served as the rabbi of Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv, and as the head of the Ein HaNatziv College. Rabbi Ben David was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, having studied for about a decade at the Har Etzion Yeshiva, as well as at the Sha’arei Uziel Beit Midrash, to cultivate a social rabbinate in the spirit of the teachings and leadership of the Sephardic sages in recent generations. He also completed his doctoral dissertation in Talmud and Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University.

In recent years, he has been a research fellow at New York University, as well as a researcher at the PNIMA organization’s Israel Workshop. In addition, he served as founder and chairman of the Massorti Union, a body that coordinates the various organizations operating among the massorti public in Israel, with the aim of fostering the values of massortiyut among wide circles of the Israeli public. Today, alongside his work as head of the Shaarei Zion Institute, Rabbi Ben David serves as a rabbi in the Tzur Hadassah communities, and as a lecturer and researcher in various frameworks.

Activity Reports

2022-2023

Activity Report