Rabbanut North America offers a new model of both talent recruitment and rabbinic formation. Our students are mid-career, seasoned professionals with a high level of Hebrew proficiency and Jewish text skills, who have already proven themselves as talented leaders in the Jewish community.

The program includes:

• Three summer residencies in Jerusalem, learning at the Hartman Beit Midrash with expert faculty
• Extensive weekly distance learning coursework, including small-group tutorials, lectures, thought leadership seminars, hevruta study, and rabbinic skills workshops
• Rabbinic skills and leadership retreats three times each year in North America with expert facilitators, visionary rabbi-practitioners, and Hartman faculty members
• Private monthly spiritual direction to deepen self-awareness, and ground moral and intellectual leadership with inner integrity and personal spirituality
• Mentorship program, including monthly one-on-one meetings with expert rabbis in the field, customized learning plans, and site visits

The inaugural cohort of this rigorous three-year ordination program launched in January 2024 with 13 outstanding Jewish leaders. This pilot cohort will be ordained in December 2026, and a second cohort began in January 2026 with ordination scheduled for December 2028.

Hartman’s North American rabbis join their counterparts from Rabbanut Yisraelit: The Hartman Beit Midrash for Israeli Rabbis, which has ordained six cohorts of rabbis since 2015. Graduates will emerge as rabbis who:

• Hold complexity well: rooted in tradition and responsive to modern realities
• Speak with moral clarity in public forums
• Guide communities in spiritual, ethical, and civic life
• Build institutions and initiatives that reflect a Judaism of moral courage, intellectual openness, and responsibility for others
• Mentor future leaders and sustain Jewish peoplehood

Together, these innovative rabbis will form a pluralistic rabbinate for the Jewish people and forge new paths of leadership for the future of Judaism and Zionism.

Program designed in consultation with the Ordination Program Advisory Board:
Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Alisa Doctoroff, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Rabbi Wesley Gardenswartz, Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, Rabbi Bini Krauss, Rabbi Noa Kushner, Rabbi Joy Levitt, Abigail Pogrebin, Rabbi Yael Splansky, and Rabbi David Steinhardt.