New Online Master’s Program Brings Azrieli Training to Jewish Educators Across the Globe

Whether you live in New York, Los Angeles, Jerusalem or Johannesburg, you can now earn an advanced degree from the premier institution of Jewish education in North America.

Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration will launch its first online master’s program, Azrieli Online, in spring 2013. Unlike a traditional master’s, the asynchronous online classes for this 36-credit degree will accommodate students’ work and teaching schedules and free them from being bound to a specific time or location, in addition to granting them access to renowned experts in Jewish education around the world. Most important, it will provide the same rigorous, high-quality advanced training for which Azrieli is renowned, including its pioneering coursework in fields such as differentiated instruction, cognition and assessment, all geared toward limmudei kodesh [Judaic studies].

“In my work with schools all across the continent, teachers and administrators tell me, ‘We’d love to attend Azrieli, but we are in Vancouver or Dallas or Miami, and relocating to NY, even for a summer, is difficult,’ ” said Dr. Jeffrey Glanz, who directs the master’s programs at Azrieli and holds the Raine and Stanley Silverstein Chair in Professional Ethics and Values. “Azrieli Online allows us to reach out to those who can’t physically be here and enhance the professionalism of Jewish educators worldwide by exposing them to our stellar faculty and innovative curriculum.”

Azrieli Dean David J. Schnall noted that the school was already offering five online courses this fall, including two taught by Jerusalem-based instructor Dr. Ilana Turetsky. “This initiative allows us to employ full-time and adjunct faculty from many different locations and to expand quality and access for our students,” said Schnall. “In doing this we also model for our students the use of distance technology in their own schools, encouraging them to collaborate across geographic boundaries in providing a more advanced or wider variety of classes and projects, especially to smaller schools whose students might otherwise be deprived.”

Candidates for Azrieli Online should possess a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution, have a strong background in Jewish studies and live in a community with an Azrieli-approved Jewish day school or yeshiva where they can complete their field work and student teaching. The application and interview process can be completed online. For more information, please email azrieli@yu.edu.