advanced kollel: executive ordination track

We are currently recruiting for our final cohort of the Advanced Kollel: Executive Ordination Track Class of 2025. The application deadline is June 20, 2022. The academic year kicks off with a week-long, in-person intensive in the last week of June. Please contact Dr. Katie Light Soloway for information about the application process.

 

In 2012, Maharat launched the Advanced Kollel: Executive Ordination Track, a three-year halakha-centric learning program culminating in rabbinic ordination. In 2019, the Jim Joseph Foundation partnered with Maharat to expand the program. The Kollel recruited women who had already achieved high-level Jewish learning; had been teaching Judaics for several years in seminaries, Jewish schools, and universities; and were already serving in positions of leadership. These women did not previously have the option of attaining ordination, having completed their education and begun their careers before Maharat was founded. 

 

Twenty women, including the Class of 2022, have received semikha through the Advanced Kollel: Executive Ordination Track. Maharat and the Jim Joseph Foundation understood from the start that the Executive Ordination Track would eventually be phased out. Yeshivat Maharat believes that we have connected with our target audience of candidates and have also noticed a shift in applicants’ interests toward a more comprehensive semikha training in-line with our Core Semikha program. 

 

Although Maharat is phasing out the Executive Ordination Track, we are committed to providing  high level Torah and scholarship as we diversify our advanced Torah offerings. In the near future, Maharat will be launching the Center for Lived Torah (information forthcoming) to provide high level Torah training to our graduates with an emphasis on impacting the community.