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The new $22 million campus of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies spread across 11,000 square meters is located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem (behind the Israel Museum). The campus, designed by Ada Karmi (the architect of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem) will draw thousands of students to the city each year and help to maintain the pluralistic nature of Jerusalem.
Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new Jerusalem campus
of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies
November 28, 2006
Ha'aretz, "Work starts on new campus for Conservative institution,"
Dec. 1, 2006
Jerusalem Post, "Expanding Pluralism," Nov. 30, 2006
 The ceremony was attended by Education Minister Prof. Yuli Tamir, the chair of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executive Ze'ev Bielsky and hundreds of Schechter students, teachers, staff, alumni and supporters . Both Tamir and Bielsky spoke lauded Schechter on the vital role it is playing in determining the demographic future of the city.
The groundbreaking was held in the framework of Schechter's "Month of Jewish Pluralism," which also featured this past week the institute's graduation ceremony for its MA students, the awarding of the Tenth Annual Liebhaber Prize for Religious Tolerance and its 19th rabbinical seminary ordination .
Architect Ada Karmi, who was chosen to design the campus by an international committee, feels that the new building will express the connection between "the text" as a Jewish symbol and "the physical place" and will reflect the harmony that exists at Schechter through the many "voices" and opinions that mingle together in its halls and classrooms. She draws her inspiration for the design from the "Schechter pluralism," which in her opinion reflects, the connection between beauty and Judaism.
In the first stage, construction will begin on the Classroom Building and on the Center for Jewish Education, which will resolve the problem of space. In the second stage, the existing building that was originally built to house overseas rabbinical students from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and later become the Israeli- Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies will be razed and replaced by a library, Beit Midrash, synagogue and more.
At the Schechter Institute it is hoped that the four organizations that are housed in the Institute's building, including: the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies Graduate School (500 students this year), the Schechter (Conservative) Rabbinical Seminary which trains men and women to enter the rabbinate, the TALI Education Fund for Jewish Studies Enrichment which operates in 170 schools and kindergartens in Israel and Midreshet Yerushalayim, a Jewish studies enrichment program for immigrants from the CIS), will help to maintain the delicate pluralistic demographic fabric of Israel's capital, given the growing ultra-Orthodox presence in Jerusalem.
Prof. David Golinkin , president of the Schechter Institute says: "As someone who has lived in Jerusalem for over 30 years, I hope that the Schechter Institute with its social and educational programs and the hundreds of students who come from all over the country to study here in Jerusalem, will help preserve the diversity and pluralism of this most important city- capital to the entire Jewish people."
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