Beit Midrash Ahad Ha'am

Israel’s future needs young people with depth, courage, and a sense of responsibility. Your support gives them a home where they can grow. At Beit Midrash Ahad Ha’am, young adults in Jerusalem have a place to think, belong, create, and turn ideas into action. You can help keep this home thriving and build what comes next. Leading a Generation of HopeAcross Israel, young people are already choosing to take responsibility: to study seriously, build community, create culture, teach, and take action. The generation that has carried the country on its shoulders since October 7, on the front lines and at home, is among the most remarkable, courageous, and committed Israel has known. Now, these young people need the foundations, opportunities, and tools to develop their vision and build a better future for Israeli society. Beit Midrash Ahad Ha’am is a pioneering effort to provide those foundations. It grew from the initiative of the young people it serves, who founded it and continue to lead it. We are building a home in Jerusalem for a generation that wants to think deeply and shape an open, relevant Israeli Judaism: one that brings different perspectives and worlds into conversation and reaches beyond divisions between religious and secular, right and left. We bring intellectual depth, creativity, and civic responsibility together. We want to be a home where students and teachers can grow, where big ideas take shape, and where people have the space to develop, teach, and put them into practice. We offer hope because changing our reality requires a place where young people can imagine it anew. Our StoryIn just three years, amid war and upheaval, an independent community has grown here: some 90 members, ages 18–35, secular, religious, and everything in between. Together, they sustain a year-round home with hundreds attending study groups each week and thousands taking part in dozens of holiday celebrations, cultural events, and gatherings for reflection and learning throughout the year. But that is just the foundation for the story that matters most. Beit Midrash Ahad Ha’am gives young people room to learn, experiment, and develop into what we hope will be the next important voices in Israeli thought, culture, education, civic life, and leadership. Here, we are participants rather than an audience, creators rather than consumers. We have a place that is truly ours, where shared resources and collaboration make it possible to teach for the first time or launch a social initiative. It is a home for writing, for new approaches to Jewish learning and living, for bringing thought and action together, and for hope. Your SupportYour support for Beit Midrash Ahad Ha’am will help a generation grow that connects thought with action, tradition with freedom, and depth with responsibility. It will give a young, liberal Jewish community in Jerusalem the stability to continue and develop. It will protect the independence of a community that charts its own course and takes responsibility for living by its values. It will expand opportunities for learning, creative work, training, and mentorship for people with a voice, an idea, and the determination to act. Your support will help us build the next, exciting stages of our work and, we hope, bring us closer to a permanent home of our own. Every gift, from a small contribution to ongoing support or a major donation, helps build this home. Donations qualify for tax benefits in Israel under Section 46 of the Israeli Income Tax Ordinance. A closer look… Who We AreOur community began with alumni of Midreshet HaShiluv in Natur and other young Jerusalemites meeting in private living rooms. In June 2023, we established a regular home at the Social Space in the former President Hotel in Jerusalem’s Talbiya neighborhood. Shahar Fisher and Tzvia Guggenheim lead the initiative alongside a dedicated team drawn from the community. The community itself has the final say: its members take ownership of the place and shape its character and direction. What Makes Us DifferentWe are a home led by a community of partners who create, initiate, and run its activities. Our courses, events, and projects grow out of the curiosity, talents, and needs of our members and teachers. We believe people grow and do their best work when they have the freedom to pursue what matters most to them. A community gives that personal motivation shared resources, collaborators, and opportunities that no one could create alone. This is how we hope to nurture the next generation of teachers, writers, cultural figures, community builders, and civic leaders. What We Do• A home open around the clock: A space available 24/7 for spending time together, meeting, studying, working, writing, praying, and gathering. Somewhere you can walk in and feel you belong. • A community that shares everyday life: Young adults build friendships, collaborate, and show up for one another in ordinary times, celebrations, and crises. This year, we are also establishing a student living community in central Jerusalem. • Around 30 course series a year, with learning nearly every evening: Philosophy, literature, history, art, culture, and social and political thought, taught by established teachers and new voices. Teachers have the freedom to choose what and how they teach, bringing their own passions into the room. • Bringing scholarship and ideas to a wider public: Collaborations with the Hebrew University, the Shalom Hartman Institute, and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute bring serious scholarship into accessible conversations that speak to everyday life. • Prayer with room for everyone: Egalitarian services on Shabbat and holidays offer a shared Jewish experience in the distinctive spirit of our community. • Living the Jewish and Israeli calendar together: Yom Kippur, an open sukkah, Hoshana Rabbah, commemorations of October 7, Hanukkah, Tu Bishvat, Megillah readings and Purim celebrations, a pre-Passover chametz party, Mimouna, intimate Holocaust remembrance gatherings through Zikaron BaSalon, Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day, Jerusalem’s largest all-night Shavuot learning event, the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, and Tisha B’Av. A shared space to celebrate, remember, and find meaning. • Culture that sparks thought and brings people together: Book launches, panel discussions, evenings of ideas, music, and literature, and gatherings marking the anniversaries of influential thinkers’ and writers’ deaths. These are opportunities to encounter works, ideas, and the people behind them. • Helping the next generation of teachers find their voice: Training and professional development give young thinkers and educators the tools, confidence, and opportunities to develop their voices and share them with others. • The Matanel Young Leadership Program: A framework that gives personal ambition room, support, and the chance to become a bold step forward. • Turning experiences of war into constructive action: A group program that offers space to reflect on and process those experiences, then translate them into social initiatives and meaningful action. • “Beshutaf” for soldiers and national service volunteers: Every Friday, we meet for learning and hummus. A regular opportunity to pause, think together, and connect with others amid the demands of service. • HaMeshotet, our journal: A community-led publication for Jewish thought, philosophy, culture, poetry, and art, giving new voices their first opportunity to be published. • A community that takes responsibility beyond its own walls: Members organize mutual aid, volunteering, and activism: raising funds and delivering Purim packages to girls at risk, running the Jerusalem Marathon for Beit Daniella, distributing fast-breaking kits during Ramadan, maintaining a protective presence during the Jerusalem Flag March, and more. • “Torah Camp”: A week devoted to learning, combining classes, study in pairs, and community life. An opportunity to make time for sustained thought and study together from morning to evening. • “Political Animal”: A discussion series that brings intellectual depth to pressing social issues, with room for questions, criticism, and independent thinking. What We Are Building• A home for intellectual, spiritual, cultural, and community life in Jerusalem: A place where young people can learn, create, meet, and belong over time. • More reasons and more opportunities to build a life in Jerusalem: Connecting people drawn to ideas and action with a community and opportunities in the city. • A visible, active presence for an open, liberal, pluralistic, and humanistic Judaism: A Judaism people can encounter, study, and help shape. • Jewish Israeli creativity rooted in lived experience: Language, rituals, and ways of life renewed through learning and community. • A new generation of teachers, creators, and community leaders: People who connect spiritual and intellectual depth with civic responsibility. • A network of people who can act together: Educators, cultural figures, and social activists who know one another and can turn shared ideas into action. • An influence that travels with our members: Participants carry the ideas, relationships, and tools they develop here into the other communities where they live and work. • More trust, dialogue, and capacity to think together: Encouraging independent criticism alongside a shared language that makes it possible to meet across differences and disagreements. • A community model that can take root elsewhere: Practical experience connecting learning, belonging, and action, which other communities can learn from and adapt. • A community model with room to grow: A proven connection between learning, belonging, creativity, and leadership. What We Still Dream of Doing• Establish a permanent home for young thinkers and creators in Jerusalem, with room for hundreds more young people and their initiatives. • Expand our leadership and creative programs, offering mentorship, practical tools, and fellowships to the next generation of thinkers, educators, and people working for change. • Give ideas a stronger public voice through writing, media, events, and a platform that helps shape the Israeli conversation. • Build a broad network of partners for change in education, culture, research, community life, and civic action. • Write the next chapter of Israeli Judaism from Jerusalem, and share the model with other communities across Israel. Beit Midrash Ahad Ha’am in Numbers• Founded in May 2023, after six years of gatherings in private living rooms and borrowed spaces. A community initiative that grew into a home. • Some 90 members paying regular membership dues: A foundation of shared ownership and commitment to sustaining the community. • Around 30 course series each year: Ongoing opportunities to study deeply, ask questions, and discover. • Around 40 holiday, cultural, and intellectual events each year: A full year of gathering, creativity, and shared life. • Total annual attendance of approximately 7,000 across our activities, including around 2,500 at our largest event, the all-night Shavuot celebration of learning. • 10 staff members working in a range of full- and part-time capacities: The people who make all of this possible. • All of this on an annual budget of just NIS 500,000: A foundation we are seeking to expand so we can make room for more people, ideas, and initiatives.