Department Information: Jewish Studies

Text-based Courses

The text-based curriculum at Kehillah Jewish High School enables students to immerse themselves in the study of key canonical Jewish texts in their original languages of Hebrew and Aramaic. Texts are studied in a traditional (pre-modern) manner utilizing chavrutah (learning pair) study. The primary texts are explored alongside both classical mefarshim (commentaries) and modern academic scholarship. In addition to offering students the opportunity to access centuries-old Jewish methods of learning, students strengthen transferable skills related to critical-thinking, rhetoric, independent research, argumentation, and evidence evaluation. Each and every course is additionally UC approved, and explores modern topics related to ethics, citizenship, and human rights.

As our students come to us with varying degrees of familiarity with Hebrew and Aramaic, every semester each course is offered at three levels:

Hebrew Immersion Level

JSHI: Jewish Studies Hebrew Intensive (prerequisite: Hebrew 3 or equivalent)
JSH: Jewish Studies Hebew (prerequisite: ability to read Hebrew with vowels)
JS: Jewish Studies English (no prerequisite)

After completing JS 101–the single Jewish Studies course all students are required to take their first semester–students are able to fulfill their Jewish Studies credit requirements exclusively with text-based courses, rotate between text-based courses and any of the other electives that we offer, or solely enroll in non-text-based electives. Thus, students can choose to take a text-based course every semester or any semester, but they are not required to take a text-based course at all.