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Navigating Israel Issues in the Diaspora

June 29, 2022

About This Course

This nine-unit course is on Navigating Israel Issues in the Diaspora. Each unit includes a pre-recorded video lesson, reading material and a quiz.

Students will receive one full credit for completing this course.

We recommend taking this course in conjunction with the “Jewish-Muslim Relations and the Arab-Israeli Conflict” elective course. We also offer a 1:1 havrutah with Dan Aviv, “The Conflict in 4 Acts“

This course is 1 credit towards smicha

Course Overview

Unit 1 – Zionism – An exploration (Part 1 of 2)

Unit 2 – Zionism – An exploration (Part 2 of 2)

Unit 3 – Division – Looking back, looking forward (Part 1 of 2)

Unit 4 – Division – Looking back, looking forward (Part 2 of 2)

Unit 5 – Nakba – Confronting our Demons (Part 1 of 2)

Unit 6 – Nakba – Confronting our Demons (Part 2 of 2)

Unit 7 – Anti-Semitism & Anti-Zionism (Part 1 of 3)

Unit 8 – Anti-Semitism & Anti-Zionism (Part 2 of 3)

Unit 9 – Anti-Semitism & Anti-Zionism (Part 3 of 3)

Course Objective

Through video lessons, additional reading and other material as well as short quizzes this course aims to give you a better understanding of the ongoing conflict.

Course Syllabus

Navigating_Israel_Issues_SyllabusDownload

Assessment

Assessments for this course will include one quiz for each unit.

Your Instructor

Michael Morgenthau
Educator
Michael Morgenthau is a community leader living in Toronto, Canada. He began wrestling with the Israeli-Diaspora relationship from an early age, growing up in the Jewish day school system. He has studied this relationship as part of his undergraduate and legal studies at universities in Canada, Europe, and Israel. Over the years, Michael has been a leader in a variety of Israel focused community organizations - from divergent cultural and political perspectives. Beyond Israel related advocacy, Michael is also a lay leader within the movement for Jewish renewal. When he is not volunteering within the Jewish community, Michael is mentoring future lawyers as the founder of a boutique LSAT tutoring company.

Ratings and Reviews

3.7
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Jeffrey Sumber
Posted 10 months ago
It's Complicated...

The topic is SO important and the amount of material presented is excellent. This course helped me deepen my compassion for the Palestinian experience HOWEVER, this would have been way more helpful with a different way of measuring my thoughts, feelings and absorption of the material. The quizzes were infuriating. The quizzes became the focus of learning rather than the material due to poor design

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Madison Meljac
Posted 1 year ago
Well Organized Survey of Modern Israeli Issues

Class was well organized and easy to listen and follow, but I believe some of the reference materials and videos he mentioned he asked us to listen to were not attached or enough the pages attached to get the correct answer. Take a lot know notes as you must be precise with your answers. The course gave me information I did not know before and helps introduce us to this new, brave world.

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Donald Meltzer
Posted 3 years ago
Changed my perspective

I give the instructor a huge amount of credit for taking on an incredibly difficult controversial topic, forcing Jewish rabbinical students to really examine so many of their assumptions about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. I remain a very strong liberal Zionist following these lectures but the course forced me to understand the Palestinian perspective better.

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