Mayanot

Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies

Official Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies logo
Established	1996
Key people	Rabbi Chaim Moss
Location	Jerusalem, Israel
Website	http://www.mayanot.edu

Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies (Hebrew: מעיינות, lit. Wellsprings), is a school in Jerusalem for Jewish students aged 20–29. Classes include instruction in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, Talmud, Torah, Chassidut, and the Hebrew Language. The Mayanot Men's Program was founded in 1996, and the Women's Program started in 2008.

The men's campus is centrally located in Jerusalem. It is within walking distance to the Kotel and the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. The men's campus is a few blocks away from Mahane Yehuda Market, also known as "the shuk". The women's campus is in the Katamon neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Mayanot is unique in that it is designed to accommodate Jews from all types of backgrounds. Talmud study is broken down into eight levels of study. The goal is to take students from learning the Hebrew alphabet to learning a section of Gemara on their own within 24 months. This unique method of Talmud study is fast gaining international recognition. Yeshivas in Europe, Australia, and America have written to Mayanot asking staff members to conduct in-service programs for their teachers, so that they may implement the methodology in their own classrooms. Rabbi Baruch Kaplan traveled to Australia where he trained several teachers at a college of Jewish Studies.

Students have a choice of learning options from classrooms to chavruta style.

Yeshiva students prepare for and review the shiur with their chavruta during a study session known as a seder. In contrast to conventional classroom learning, in which a teacher lectures to the student and the student repeats the information back in tests, chavruta-style learning challenges the student to analyze and explain the material, point out the errors in his partner's reasoning, and question and sharpen each other's ideas, often arriving at entirely new insights of the meaning of the text.

Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies is an accredited institution of MASA, a joint project of the Jewish Agency and the government of Israel. The school advises students who wish to obtain credit for their courses at Mayanot to consult with their school's admissions office to arrange the transfer of credits in advance.