Academics

Start anytime, anywhere, at your convenience.

Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary has three components:

• Cohort Learning (sixteen live and interactive courses with other students)
• Innovation & Synagogue Engagement Program (three professional development courses of your choosing)
• Electives (twenty-one credits of your choice at your pace)

Students begin by enrolling at any time. Students can take any number of electives and innovation and synagogue program courses at their discretion between their enrollment date and the beginning of the academic calendar in January.

The cohort is a group of students who take academic classes together, in addition to their asynchronous innovation and electives courses. All students in a cohort graduate at the same time and receive smicha on ordination day together at the Shames JCC on the Hudson in Terrytown, NY.

Cohort Learning

• Classical and Modern Hebrew
• Rabbinic Literature I and II
• Tanakh I and II
• Talmud and Practical Halachah
• Theology and Jewish Thought
• Jewish History I and II
• Liturgy: Weekday, Shabbat and Holidays
• Practical Rabbinics, Pastoral Care and Homiletics

These courses are nine weeks each with two cohort learning courses running each quarter. One course is live through Zoom and the other through our online bulletin board and chat system, Slack. Our Zoom classes meet once a week for two hours. Our Slack-based courses are semi-asynchronous, with students and educators posting and receiving assignments throughout the week.

Electives
Students choose from what interests them, including:

• Advanced academic subjects such as text, history, culture, spirituality and moreAdvanced courses on Hebrew, text, history, thought and practice to expand on Cohort Learning
• Contemporary Jewish issues (race, LGBTQ, ethics, etc.)
• Certifications in areas such as trauma-informed care, mandated reporter training and Prepare-Enrich
• Education theory, curriculum design and education administration
• Independent study courses designed by students based on their own interests and experiences
• Courses provided by educational organizations beyond PRS, such as YIVO, Tel Aviv University, Yad Vashem, and many more
• Electives can be taken at any time, in any order. Some students choose longer, more in-depth courses, and other choose to take more, shorter courses. Students may take as many Electives as they wish, provided they meet the minimum credit amount

Additional Hebrew Support
For students who start their PRS learning at the beginner Hebrew level, there is a required pre-cohort year. This allows for Hebrew intensive, as well as time to ease into taking innovation and elective coursework.

Course Catalog

Policy for Receiving Credits for Previously Taken Courses at Other Seminaries

1. Students who attended a Rabbinical Seminary prior to attending the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, and left that school in good standing, are eligible for up to 7.5 credits of Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary elective credits
2. Students must provide the Director with the following:
   1. A copy of a transcript from said seminaries
   2. A course catalog description of each course
   3. A letter or other proof of status in good standing from the seminary (if not shown on the transcript)
3. If those courses can be satisfactorily matched to existing Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary elective courses, then credit will be awarded. This is entirely up to the discretion of the Director, and no exceptions will be made, nor will students be allowed to challenge the credits awarded
4. Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary will only accept credits from the following seminaries:
   1. The Jewish Theological Seminary
   2. Hebrew Union College
   3. Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies
   4. Academy of Jewish Religion
   5. Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

Innovation & Synagogue Engagement Program
Innovation courses include professional development related learning, including management, technology, marketing, strategy, and more. They are designed to help students create their own Jewish projects which act as a kind of capstone for rabbinical smicha and what they will begin their rabbinate with. Students are building projects as diverse as Jewish nonprofits, consulting firms, corporate chaplaincy and their own Jewish communities. Students may also pursue a Certificate in Jewish Innovation.

Students who are not interested in developing their own projects have also used their time in the Innovation & Synagogue Engagement Program to improve upon the organizations they already work for, including synagogues and Jewish educational programs. Our newly added synagogue engagement courses are designed to give credit to those students in areas such as ritual leadership, adult education and children’s programming.

All courses at PRS are pass/fail. Educators do not assign letter grades or points. Instead, students are given feedback on their work and encouraged not to compete against their fellow students, but to compete against themselves and show improvement over time in our program.

PRS also provides independent study elective credits from a variety of educational outlets including

UnYeshiva
Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary partners with like-minded organizations such as UnYeshiva to break down the walls of traditional Jewish and rabbinical learning. Students in our program receive course credit for taking classes at UnYeshiva.

Additionally, we are proud to offer the exclusive course Jewish Innovation Unbound, created by Rabbi Lex Rofeberg and Dan Libenson, as part of our Innovation & Synagogue Engagement Program (available to rabbinical students only) and our publicly available Community Bet Midrash.

Receive More Information About Our Program