Ze Kollel (ONLINE)
Ze Kollel offers an intensive immersion in classical jewish learning through the study of the weekly portion (Parsha) and Talmud. All members of Ze Kollel will be offered opportunities to teach and to develop their skills as potential educators and leaders within Jewish education.
Ze Kollel aims to be a place of personal and spiritual growth with the text as our guide and our fellow students as our companions. Our name is both a nod to traditional Kollel environments which are often exclusive to men, while also being a transliterated form of the Hebrew words that mean, “It includes”.
Ze Kollel is a partnership with Hillel Deutschland and Oy Vey Amsterdam.
The course is given in English, in collaboration with Paideia – the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden.
Course Information and Application Process
The application for this course is closed.
The course consists of 12 sessions on Mondays from 09:00 to 13:00 CET, starting on Monday, March 4. The course fee is SEK 200 and payment is made via invoice, which will be sent by email after the course has started. The admission letter will be sent via email about two weeks before the course starts. Please check your spam folder. Paideia Folkhögskola is closed on Swedish public holidays and Jewish holidays. The Ze Kollel team may contact you as part of the admissions process.
Prior knowledge
To apply for this course, you need basic computer skills and knowledge of how to use the digital platform Zoom. The school offers Zoom manuals and a training opportunity before the start of the course.
Hebrew knowledge is helpful but no prior knowledge or Hebrew language skills are required. The texts are read in English, if they are available in translation.
Course material
Course material is included in the cost for this course.
Europe (JDC) for its support of Kollel Shabbatonim and alumni engagement.
About the teachers
Lievnath Faber is a Jewish educator and activist, birth- and death doula and ritualist. She holds an MA in the arts from the University of Amsterdam and is a senior Humanity in Action fellow as well as a senior Landecker Democracy fellow who writes and works on the intersection of antiracism and antisemitism in Europe and specialized in the Netherlands. She weaves Jewish activism, life cycle awareness and ritual together to create joyful and empowered Jewish life in Europe. She is a trained mikveh guide and grief ceremony facilitator, (co) founder and program director of Oy Vey, the open, inclusive and unapologetically Jewish community in Amsterdam and part of the faculty staff of Ze Kollel, the immersive pan-European Jewish learning programme. She is a rabbinical student with ALEPH – the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and works towards creating joyful and empowered Jewish life in Europe.
Sophie Bigot Goldblum earned a Law degree from Strasbourg University and an MA from the EHESS (Paris) in Jewish Philosophy. Sophie holds a MA degree, magna cum Laude, from Hebrew University in Jewish Studies and is an alumna of Paideia’s one-year program.
She was blessed to be able to learn in various yeshivot in Israel and the United States: Pardes, the Conservative Yeshiva, Hadar, and Drisha.
She has been published in Jewish Journals in the US and Europe(JOFA journal, Mozaika, Tenou’a, LVS) and teaches at the Conservative Yeshiva’s Summer program.
Rabbi Avigayil Halpern (she/her) is an educator and writer whose work focuses on feminist and queer Torah, most recently through her newsletter project, Approaching (avigayil.substack.com). She is currently the Rabbinic Fellow at Hillel Deustchland, served as the Cooperberg-Rittmaster Pastoral and Educational Intern at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in 2023, and has taught in Torah institutions and synagogues,internationally. Avigayil holds rabbinic ordination from the Hadar Institute, and a BA in Judaic Studies from Yale University. She has completed a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at New York Presbyterian/Columbia, is trained as a Mikveh Guide through Rising Tide, the national network of community mikvaot, and has participated in Faith Matters’ Movement Chaplaincy Training. Avigayil was selected as one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” in 2021, and as a Vatichtov: She Writes fellow in 2022.
Photo: Canva/Hanna Reichel
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