American Jewish University AJU

Advanced Certificate in Academic Learning & Rabbinic Training

The path we walk at the Ziegler School in our study of Jewish sacred texts is both new and old, fresh and

well worn. We read writings that centuries of Jews have read, and we read them in dialogue with the

generations of scholars – Geonim, Rishonim and Ahronim – who have read them before us. We also read

those texts through lenses that have been ground by contemporary scholars in the Universities and

Rabbinical seminaries in this country, in Israel, and around the world. The directive of Kohelet guides us:

It is best that you grasp the one without letting go of the other, for the one who reveres God will attend to

both (Kohelet 7:18).

We understand the study of Jewish sacred writings as a spiritual practice. In this we stand in the long

tradition ranging from the Talmud through the great centers of learning in Franco-Germany, Spain, North

Africa, the Middle East, through the great yeshivot of Eastern Europe and into our own times. “After the

Temple was destroyed, God was found in the four cubits of halakhic discussion (Berakhot 8a),” teach the

Sages, who also assert “If you would learn to know the One at whose word the world came into being,

learn aggadah (Sifrei Devarim, Piska 94).” The intellectual pursuit of subtle distinctions in halakhah, the

close readings of Midrash and parshanut, or the joys of philosophical theology is itself a spiritual exercise.

The intellectual and the spiritual are one on this path.