Department Head: Prof. Daniel Reiser
Program Director: Chava Magder-Cohen
Admissions Director: Hadassah Levy 

For over 30 years, Teaching Tanakh has been the flagship educational degree program at Herzog College, training thousands of teachers for Israel’s religious schools. Our Master’s degree in Teaching Tanakh and Parshanut takes this program to a higher level for teachers in Israel and around the world, raising the standard of professional learning in the topic central to Judaic studies in educational institutions around the world. 

Teaching Tanakh is a multi-disciplinary endeavor, exploring Biblical verses and their commentaries drawn from multiple sources including Talmud, Midrash and Halachic literature. The Herzog approach to the study of Tanakh involves literary analysis of every chapter, understanding its historical context, the places where its events took place, and its philosophical messages. Interpretations of Biblical stories can also be examined through engagement with contemporary literature, poetry, art, cinema and theater.   

Students in the M.A. program study passages from the Tanakh, expand their knowledge of its many classical interpretations, and explore opportunities for engaging multidisciplinary teaching. The program combines traditional commentaries with new study methods, modern research and interpretative tools, while retaining an authentic religious Jewish commitment to the Torah text.  

The English two-year Master’s program includes 14 hybrid and asynchronous courses in English. It is taught mostly online over two years, with one two-week summer semester in Israel at the end of the first year.  Now in its third year, the program focuses on exploring connections between the Biblical text and other Jewish traditional sources, and developing pedagogy skills, as well as developing techniques for interpreting, researching and teaching the Tanakh and its commentaries.  

Many of our existing Tanakh Teaching Courses are accredited as part of this degree. If you have taken online courses through Herzog College, you may already have earned credits toward our M.A. degree in Teaching Tanakh & Parshanut.