Hemdat expands innovation program to teach Israeli high school students about Reform and Conservative Judaism

At a press conference in Jerusalem HEMDAT's Executive Director, Ms Zamira Segev, described the new series of  innovative teaching units and educational source books for high school students on the  basic principles of the  Conservative, Reform and  Humanistic-Secular streams of Judaism developed by  HEMDAT in its major new effort towards  introducing  innovative teaching programs on religious pluralism into the high schools of Israel. Over three hundred high school teachers have attended HEMDAT's Pluralism Teacher's Seminars to prepare them in the use of the new teaching units. Pretest teaching programs have been started in some ten schools in different parts of the country including in those with concentrations of new immigrants and the under- privileged. The program is  being carried out in cooperation with the Conservative, Reform and Humanistic-Secular Movements. Up till now Israel school curricula  avoided all mention of the main world streams of Judaism-the Reform and Conservative Movements. Former Chair of the Jewish Agency, MK Avrum Burg, now Chairman of the Knesset, who published a very favorable press review of the new HEMDAT text on "The Streams of Judaism" said that this important new text  approaches the understanding of the various steams of Judaism in the spirit of "mutual respect and love." The initial seed money for the project has been provided by the Israel Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency. However, HEMDAT is now urgently looking for additional major financial support in order to expand the program to cover  schools all over the country with a special emphasis on under-privileged and new immigrants.

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