Just as previous cohorts overcame the COVID pandemic, the 2024 cohort of 21 teachers from Latin America overcame cancelled flights and incoming missiles to fly to Israel for their Winter Seminar.
Judaic Studies teachers from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela came to Herzog College to complete their professional training with a 17-day teacher training seminar in Jerusalem, and to visit the sites of the October 7 massacre.
They have been studying online in Spanish at Herzog College’s “Rimonim” professional development course organized by Rabbi Shmuel Kornblit. They graduated with Jewish studies teaching certificates from the Israeli Ministry of Education.
The 21 teachers come from diverse schools and communities throughout Latin America, including a teacher from an international virtual online Jewish school taught in Spanish. The final stage of their 18-month course was a two-week educational seminar in Israel, which included workshops by leading Jewish educators on Jewish history, digital pedagogical tools, and Jewish identity, and visits to historical sites.
They also visited communities in southern Israel that were attacked on October 7 and met with Spanish-speaking IDF spokesman Major Roni Kaplan to hear about the war. Program organizer Shmuel Kornblit explains: “Today more than ever, we need to connect with Jewish teachers around the world who feel very far from Israel during this difficult time. This seminar in Israel has helped them to understand what has been happening during the war, and to share the real facts and their personal feelings with their students when they return to their classrooms.”
The Rimonim project, now in its fourth year, was created through a partnership between Herzog College and Israel’s Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Fighting Antisemitism, as part of the Herzog-UnitEd initiative.
“There is a huge thirst for Tanach (Bible) studies throughout the Spanish-speaking Jewish world,” Kornblit explains. He regularly visits schools in Latin America to discuss what Spanish-language resources would be helpful for their Judaic studies teachers. A new cohort of teachers will join the program in February 2025.