Mayanot

The Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies brings together Jewish learning and the experience of living in Israel, with programs ranging from introductory study to advanced learning and short-term educational experiences.[1][4] Its stated educational approach combines Judaism’s intellectual and spiritual traditions through holistic, applied learning.[4] Dean Rabbi Shlomo Gestetner has described its purpose as enabling young adults to study their Jewish heritage in Israel and Jerusalem, develop a strong Jewish identity, and become future Jewish leaders.[2]

The name “Mayanot” comes from Proverbs 5:16, rendered in the institute’s explanation as “Let thy wellsprings (Mayanot) be dispersed abroad.”[4] The name expresses the institute’s aspiration that students acquire enduring knowledge of Jewish heritage and use it to enrich their communities.[4] Its educational mission extends beyond students’ time in Jerusalem: graduates are encouraged to bring their learning into their communities, businesses, and families.[2]

The institute lists its address as Sderot Ben Tsvi 7, Jerusalem, and the World Center stands across from Sacher Park in the city center.[4][3] The campus serves as a base for Jewish study and community-building, with residential, learning, and recreational facilities.[3]

Rabbis Shlomo Gestetner and Kasriel Shemtov founded the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies in the 1990s.[4] In a retrospective founding account, the founders traced the idea to their concern that existing programs for college students visiting Israel did not provide the holistic Jewish education they envisioned.[5] Shemtov described the desired institution as an inclusive place for people following different paths toward Judaism, where Torah learning would encourage engagement with the surrounding world rather than withdrawal from it.[5] Gestetner emphasized bringing serious intellectual study and spirituality together.[5]

The same retrospective places Mayanot’s earliest home in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood and credits Melbourne philanthropist Joseph Gutnick with critical financial support during its early years.[5] It recounts that the first class consisted of seven students and that enrollment subsequently grew by 50 percent annually through word of mouth.[5] Early teachers named in the account include Rabbi Baruch Kaplan, Rabbi David Fink, Hebrew teacher A. Atzmi, and Rabbi Dr. Allon Silberg.[5]

The retrospective credits Rabbi Yisroel Noach Wichnin, who became Rosh Yeshiva, with guiding a curriculum designed to take students from learning the Hebrew alphabet to acquiring the tools for independent study.[5] It also describes Rabbi Chaim Moss’s leadership of the Judaic Studies Program, which offered four- to five-week winter and summer courses for international students.[5]

Mayanot’s partnership with Birthright developed in the early 2000s, and its institutional timeline records 200 participants in the first session and a cumulative total of 40,000 more than a decade later.[4] The founding retrospective recounts that local campus rabbis accompanied participants and that interest in further learning prompted an additional three-week study-and-residence option after Birthright trips.[5]

Growing enrollment prompted a move to 28 David Yellin Street in Jerusalem’s Mekor Baruch neighborhood in 2002, according to the founding retrospective.[5] The account describes classrooms and dormitories intended to allow students to learn and live together, followed by expansions in 2003 and 2011.[5] It dates the purchase of the five-story building at 7 Ben Tsvi, intended as a future headquarters, to 2016.[5]

The retrospective dates the establishment of the Women’s Program in Katamon to 2008, with support from Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky and Jeffrey and Karen Cohen, and identifies George and Pamela Rohr as its first investors.[5] It describes the program as combining rigorous Jewish-text study with opportunities for women to explore and express their spirituality.[5] A year-long Post High School Program was added in 2015.[4]

During preparations for reopening under COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, Mayanot planned for incoming students to arrive on three flights and travel by bus to six quarantine apartments.[6] A Zoom learning arrangement was to allow study to begin during quarantine; these were reopening plans rather than a record of their eventual implementation.[6]

The Mayanot World Center was dedicated on December 9, 2025, as the institute’s new home.[2] The campus cost $20 million, and major donors Igor Tulchinsky and Yitzchak Mirilashvili joined Chabad rabbis from around the world at the ribbon-cutting.[2] The institute’s own timeline identifies 2024 as the center’s opening, while the December 2025 ceremony marked its dedication.[4][2]

In the year preceding the World Center’s dedication, more than 400 students from 16 countries and 94 universities participated in 85 weekly classes, while thousands more accessed online learning.[2] Before the inauguration, Mayanot was described as entering its 30th year and teaching hundreds of students annually from dozens of countries.[3]

In 2020, the institute normally expected about 200 men and women to arrive each fall across three learning tracks: a post-college yeshivah program, a gap-year program for students from Modern Orthodox homes, and a gap-year program for public-school students with limited Jewish backgrounds.[6] During that year’s pandemic-related preparations, participation in the post-college and public-school tracks was expected to fall by 50 percent, while the Modern Orthodox track was expected to maintain its usual enrollment.[6]

A September 2025 institutional account reported that close to 150 young men had joined the yeshiva that academic year.[7] It identified English-speaking students from the United States, Canada, England, South Africa, Australia, and Israel, and also reported increased enrollment in the women’s program in Nachlaot.[7]

Mayanot offers year-abroad and semester study, executive learning, introductory and advanced Jewish studies, short-term educational experiences, and a post-high-school program.[4] The sample women’s schedule for the 2026–2027 school year includes Chassidic thought, Chumash, Halacha, Jewish history and philosophy, Hebrew, and Talmud; the schedule cautions that classes may vary.[4]

An eight-step Talmud curriculum progresses from methodology and terminology toward independent comprehension, study of Rashi and Tosafot, analytical learning, and the application of Talmudic reasoning to Jewish legislation.[4] Alongside textual study, Mayanot’s educational aims include helping participants understand the personal significance of Judaism and its practices, as well as developing an understanding of the soul.[8]

The institute’s experiential approach seeks to make participants active members of the Jewish story rather than simply visitors to Israeli sites.[8] Danny Sack of Mayanot described the aim as enabling participants “to be part of the story” and to articulate why Israel has meaning for them as Jews.[8] In the trip sequence he described, hiking and shared activities in northern Israel build trust and a sense of safety before the group travels to Jerusalem to explore Judaism together.[8]

In a 2023 opinion article, Rabbi Shlomo Gestetner argued that immersive study and life in Jerusalem could transform students who arrived with little Jewish knowledge into more knowledgeable and committed participants in Jewish life.[9] He attributed that development to engagement with Jewish practice and texts, including the Tanakh and Talmud, alongside the experience of living in Jerusalem.[9]

Gestetner recounted that, during the first weeks of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, students who had arrived before the High Holy Days stayed up late tying tzitzit for IDF soldiers.[9] In his account, the students had only recently begun studying the relevant Jewish laws, and soldiers at his sons’ bases had requested the tzitzit.[9] He also credited a Mayanot alumnus at Cornell University with starting a grassroots tefillin campaign, reporting that thousands of young men had begun putting on tefillin daily and sharing photographs through WhatsApp.[9]

Israel Advocacy Training forms another part of the institute’s programming and is explicitly intended as anti-BDS education to prepare students to support Israel on college campuses.[4] Its listed components include seminars, workshops on the Middle East conflict, educational field trips, practice debates, and responses to campus scenarios.[4] The expanded World Center was also intended to support internships, volunteer opportunities, service learning, and educational tours.[2][3]

Mayanot offers free, ten-day tours of Israel in conjunction with Taglit-Birthright Israel.[10] It was among the eight largest trip organizers examined in research on Birthright’s Israeli participants, for which qualitative data, including focus groups, were collected during summer and fall 2007.[11] A participant in a Mayanot focus group described Diaspora participants’ recognition of Israeli soldiers as “the guardians of the Jewish people” as empowering.[11]

Mayanot’s educational travel has also included a program called “Mayanot Wilderness Adventure,” identified in scholarship on Israel youth tours as a summer program pursuing Zionist education through tourism.[12] The relevant discussion names the program without supplying further details about its operation.[12]

In 2013, Mayanot Israel launched Mayanot Legacy, an eight-day tour for parents of Birthright alumni.[13] The inaugural group consisted of 72 participants, including both previous visitors to Israel and people making their first visit, at a price of $1,995 per person excluding airfare.[13] Its itinerary included sites and activities in the Carmel, Rosh Hanikra, the Golan Heights, Safed, Jerusalem, and the Negev.[13]

Continued learning after an initial Israel visit is an explicit institutional goal, expressed by executive director Rabbi Kasriel Shemtov’s question, “What happens on day 11?”[2] The founding retrospective presents the three-week post-Birthright extension as a response to participants who wanted to deepen their connection to Judaism and Israel.[5]

The Mayanot World Center includes a large beit midrash, a rooftop event space, a meditation garden, a gym, upgraded dormitories, and a Lone Soldier Center.[3] A September 2025 campus account additionally described four dormitory floors, classrooms, a dining hall and kitchen, an events terrace, a mikvah, and safe rooms.[7]

The institute’s lone-soldier residential initiative offers Shabbat and holiday programming, social and spiritual support, Torah classes, and opportunities to connect with visiting students.[4] The World Center was conceived as a base for immersive study and community-building, alongside executive learning, volunteering, internships, and Israel advocacy for college students.[3][4]