TIMES OF ISRAEL
by David Horovitz
September 8, 2015

In a classroom at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, a group of mature students are learning about Tisha B’Av — the Jewish calendar’s saddest day, when the destruction of the two Temples and a whole series of subsequent tragedies are commemorated. Their teacher, Yehuda Kurtzer, reflects on how, after the loss of the Temples, a “rabbinical elite” in ancient times resorted to the use of synagogues to give Judaism the focal points it needed to survive….What is exceptional, however, is that the 20 or so students in Kurtzer’s class today are not Jews. Neither are they Christians, for whom Hartman has run programs for many years. They are, rather, Muslims. American Muslim leaders, to be precise. Most of them are in their 30s and 40s…And they are here, in Jerusalem, because they want to learn about Judaism, Zionism and Israel. READ MORE