Zionism in Action Young Jews Spend Year in Israel ‘shnat Limud,’ Studying Torah

“Shnat Limud” (a year of Jewish study in Israel) is today a concept that has taken root in wide circles of diaspora Jewry and is accepted virtually as a commonplace. But it was not always so, recalls Dr. Haim Hamiel, director of the Jewish Agency’s department for Torah education in the diaspora. In fact, he says with unconcealed pride, “we virtually invented the idea.”

Up until a few years ago, the challenge put to Zionist young people was “Shnat Sherut”–a year (or sometimes a shorter period) of work in Israel usually in a kibbutz.

The concept of “Shnat Limud” developed slowly. There had always been the odd few dozen youngsters from the U.S. and Europe who preferred to spend part of their yeshiva training in Israeli yeshivot. But in most cases, the courses they sought were purely Talmud, without any Israel-oriented history, geography or philosophy studies, Indeed, many of the “traditional type” Israeli yeshivot still have an ambivalent attitude towards Zionism and the Jewish State and would look askance at an overseas student seeking “Israel content” in his courses here.

But this was never the entire picture. The more nationalist-inclined yeshivot, especially Kerem BeYavneh near Ashdod and Merkaz Harav Kook in Jerusalem always wove a Zionist-infused ideology into their curricula–and always tried to offer courses for overseas students, and for Israelis from non-yeshiva backgrounds.

SPECIAL PROGRAMS FOR DIASPORA YOUTH

Dr. Hamiel’s department has built on these foundations in its efforts to encourage young people from abroad to spend some time studying “Torat Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael.” The department recognizes and assists 16 yeshivot and girls’ seminaries that have developed “special programs”–in addition to regular Talmud and Torah studies–designed for foreign students who come here for “Shnat Limud.” At the beginning of this year, Hamiel reports, some 550 young men and 350 girls were enrolled at these various institutions.

They includes such well known places of learning as Kerem BeYavneh, Yeshivat Sha’alavim and Kol Torah, and some newer and less known institutions, such as the Neve Yerushalayim girls’ seminary in Jerusalem, which cater specifically for “ba’alei teshuva”–young people with little religious background. The Yod-Gimmel program is the department’s latest and rapidly growing plan in the field of “Shnat Limud.”

“Visiting New York some years ago,” Hamiel explains, “I learned from local educators that high school students in America often graduate in December or January–and spend the following six to nine months working casually (or doing nothing much) until their college courses begin in the fall. It immediately occurred to me that these months could be far better spent here in Israel–if our local institutions could be persuaded to make arrangements to take in these youngsters, on route between school and college….”

IMPRESSIVE RESULTS

The results are already impressive, and the future looks bright. At the present time, there are 131 youngsters from the U.S. taking the “Yod-Gimmel” courses at four institutions, “and we could have many, many more if we had the room for them.” Hamiel says. The more academically-inclined are offered a rich learning program at Bar Ilan University, or at the Machon Gold and Kfar Pinnes teacher’s training colleges, while those with an active or outdoor bent can combine learning with work at one of the religious kibbutzim.

Hamiel sees this program burgeoning into a major aspect of his department’s work in Israel. Most of the department’s efforts are, of course, concentrated on Jewish education abroad. Over the years the department has initiated the establishment of, or helped in the running of, scores of Jewish schools all over the world. Most recently Hamiel has put the emphasis on “Yeshivot tichoniot”–yeshiva high schools on the Israeli (or American) model.

“We’ve recently sent a man out to Mexico to launch one there,” Hamiel reports. Other such yeshivot already exist in Brazil and Argentina.

Hamiel says the department’s other ongoing projects in Israel are also developing rapidly and successfully, limited only by budgetary considerations. “If it were not for politics,” he remarks sadly, “our budget–to meet our potential needs–would forge far ahead of that of the Education Department….” (The two departments, Education and Torah Education, receive equal budgets; this year of some IL 18 million. The Education Department is traditionally run by the Labor Party, while Torah Education has always been a Mizrachi concern.)

Machon Gold, the department’s teacher training college in Jerusalem, is bursting at the seams, as is the Beit Midrash Letorah, also for aspiring Jewish teachers, where the syllabus is more Talmud-oriented. The courses offered there are recognized as “credit-worthy” by some American universities.

Graduates are expected to teach day school or Hebrew school when they return home–but the ultimate hope, of course, is that they will return to live in Israel and many of them do. “We see them as sojourners, and missionaries, when they go back to their home countries,” says Hamiel.