PunkTorah

Independent Jewish Spirituality

Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary: Online Rabbinical Program

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Imagine this being your rabbinical school! Rabbinical education from anywhere, anytime

Through our relationship with Darshan Yeshiva, we are supporting the launch of Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary (PRS), what we hope to be the very best in practical, distance learning based rabbinical education.

What do we love about this project? PRS is the only rabbinical school with a focus on helping students launch innovative Jewish projects around the world. It’s both a rabbinical smicha program and a Jewish communal incubator.

PRS has three goals:

  • To train and ordain future rabbis for the future of Judaism
  • To provide the absolute best distance education rabbinical education possible
  • To be a leader in Jewish pluralism

Three reasons you’ll LOVE LOVE LOVE Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary

Multi-Denominational Smicha

Rabbinical education comes from Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and post-denominational rabbis. Smicha, ordination, is through this trans-denominational bet din.

High Learning Standards

This is not quickie smicha. This is not private ordination in the back room of a deli. This is 100% legitimate education from MA and Ph.D. educators. PRS’s rabbinical education program includes two years of studying text, history, language, and practical rabbinics using distance learning tools that create as much interaction between students and educators as possible.

Students also must do elective learning through a system of podcasts and videos, homework and quizzes.

Finally, students also must present at the end of two years a thesis in the form of a program, product or project launch that will make Jewish life better.

PRS goes to great lengths to stress the intensity of the program. The academic calendar provides a one-week break per quarter, which is filled with the independent elective learning.

Seeking Non-Traditional Students

At PunkTorah, we’re proud to be non-traditional (even if by non-traditional we mean being super traditional in a non-traditional way). In supporting PRS by way of Darshan Yeshiva, we’re helping find non-traditional rabbinical students who continue to work full time while studying with Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary.

So what if you want a more traditional career? As PRS puts it…

There are many options for rabbinical education and we would encourage students seeking more traditional careers to attend more traditional rabbinical schools.

https://jewishpluralism.org/about/

What is the relationship between PRS, Darshan Yeshiva and PunkTorah?

PunkTorah Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, which began as this blog. This blog went into archive mode (no longer updated) many years ago.

PunkTorah now runs Darshan Yeshiva, a distance learning-based “yeshiva for beginners” including a popular conversion to Judaism program.

A team from Darshan Yeshiva including technologists, marketing people and educators has put together PRS. PRS is ran separately from PunkTorah and Darshan Yeshiva, though some educators work at both Darshan Yeshiva and Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary.

Learn more about Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary’s online rabbinical smicha program here.

Become a Jewish Spiritual Leader

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Our online leadership school, Darshan Yeshiva, teaches you everything you need to know to become a Darshan, a lay Jewish spiritual leader serving unaffiliated communities all over the world. There are so many Jews out there who need community, but for whom there will never be a brick-and-mortar synagogue community. That’s where YOU come in!

The Darshan Yeshiva curricula includes:
  • Prayer Book Hebrew
  • Liturgy for Shacharit, Mincha, Maariv
  • Shabbat and Holiday Services
  • Jewish history, philosophy and literature
  • The Jewish calendar
  • Lay chaplaincy including hospital visits
  • Life cycle events including bar/bat mitzvah, baby naming, funerals and shiva minyanim
  • Practical halacha and Talmud
  • Maggid training

OneShul: Live Streaming Jewish Services

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OneShulAfternoonService

OneShul is the world’s only online chavurah: a synagogue not led by a rabbi, but by the community who makes OneShul happen. Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, holiday and special services are our regular monthly live streaming events, as well as classes on lots of Jewish topics and special chat sessions where people from all over the Internet can experience Judaism together. Join us by clicking here.

Hanukkah: Festival of Lights

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Ketzirah in the Fairy Lights (c 2000)
Ketzirah in the Fairy Lights (c 2000)

So I’m sitting here listening to Matisyahu rock it on the Miracle remix EP and thinking about Hanukkah.  I’ve been having this nearly heretical thought lately.  I know, not shocking for me — but go with it.

Hanukkah is the festival of lights – right?

The solstice aspect and the reviving of the light is even older than the Maccabee aspect, if you think about it.  There’s certainly ancient midrash about Adam at the solstice and such.  The central ritual activity is lighting the 9-branch menorah called a Hanukkiah. Just about everything else we added on over the centuries, which is just fine.

But let’s go back to that light thing again.  It’s the festival of lights….

Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking about.  All those super pretty lights, preferably the white ones – not the tacky color ones, that our Christian neighbors put up this time of year.  Yeah…we have the festival of lights, but they put up the lights? I know it could be seen as the height of assimilation, but what if we adopted white lights on our homes too.  It seems like the urge to put all those lights and candles up all springs from a deep mythic place where we are all afraid of the dark.  Where we’re all afraid that the sun really won’t come back and it will just keep getting darker and darker.

I know when I walk home during the winter I’m so grateful for all those lights.  They push back the darkness.  The remind me, even the tacky ones, that I have neighbors and I’m not alone in the world. Someone must be there to make those lights  happen right?

Trust me, I’m not for the Christmas-ization of Hanukkah.  I had a “Hanukkah Bush” when I was a kid.  It makes me a bit ill in retrospect. There’s just no way that tacky white plastic tree had anything to do with the Jewish wheel of the year. But lights I think we have a pretty valid claim on.  I know traditional Judaism likes to put as many walls between us and breaking mitzvot as they can, but would some pretty white lights be so wrong during these dark days?

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Carly Lesser (a.k.a. Ketzirah – קצירה) is Kohenet, Celebrant and artist whose  passion is helping Jews who are  unaffiliated, earth-based or in interfaith / inter-denominational relationships connect more deeply with Judaism and make it relevant in their every day lives. She is an active blogger and prayer leader on OneShul.org andPeelaPom.com.

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PUNKTORAH
PO Box 7414
Richmond, VA 23221-0414

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