Welcome to our “Meet the Academic Faculty” series. During the upcoming few months, we will interview our lecturers, the living spirits behind the work of the Melton Centre in general and the International MA program in particular.

We are happy to kick off this series with Dr. Michael Gillis, Director of The Melton Centre for Jewish Education. Gillis is a respected Jewish educator, who has taken a vital role in shaping The Melton Centre’s values and educational vision. He grew up in England and trained as a teacher after graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English Literature. After a brief period as an English teacher in a state-funded school in London, his career has been dedicated to Jewish education.

The Basics:

• Born and raised in England.
• A participant in the first cohort of the Jerusalem Fellows Program (1982).
• Before Aliyah, worked as Jewish Studies curriculum coordinator at Mount Scopus College in Melbourne, Australia.
• PhD from Monash University in Melbourne, with a dissertation on “Hermeneutics and Jewish Education: the Case of Rabbinic Literature.”
• Areas of teaching and research: Philosophy of Jewish Education, the Jewish educational thought of Emmanuel Levinas, teaching rabbinic literature, the pedagogy of teaching religion.

A native of Northeast England, Dr. Gillis is a fan of the Sunderland football club, and is a cricket enthusiast. His work in England, Australia and Israel has provided him with a broad perspective on Jewish education that affects how he sees the role of The Melton Centre for Jewish Education in cultivating relationships between Jewish Educators worldwide.  

Q: Please tell us a bit about your background.

A: I grew up in a small Jewish community in the northeast of England. In our family, Jewish education and learning were core values. I grew up with the notion that one has to develop a deep understanding of being Jewish, with a high level of literacy and learning. My parents were active in setting up the local Jewish primary school, which later played a part in my decision to get involved in Jewish education. After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English Literature, I decided on a teaching career in the state system, even though my plan was eventually to move to Jewish education. I thought it was important to experience general education first.

Q: And what happened then?

A: In 1982, I was accepted to the Jerusalem Fellows, a program for Jewish educational leadership. I think, at 25, I was the youngest in the group. The others were much more experienced. The program was directed by Professor Seymour Fox, after whom our School of Education is now named. The faculty included major figures like Professor Mike Rosenak, Professor Walter Ackerman and Professor Mordechai Nisan. They, and my peers on the program, opened before me a whole world of Jewish education. Alumni were required to return to their home communities. After a year and a half in the UK I was offered a position at Mount Scopus College in Melbourne Australia, the largest Jewish day school in the world. This was an adventure for our young family. I was part of the senior management of the school and had a leadership role in Jewish Studies curriculum development. The Melton Centre played a key role in making the match between me and the school.

Q: How did all of these steps lead you to come to work at The Melton Centre?

A: We were planning Aliya from Australia, and I got a call from Alan Hoffman who was then ending his tenure as Director of The Melton Centre. He offered me the position of Director of the Senior Educators Program, which brought Jewish educators from all over the world to spend a year at Hebrew University.

Q: And while you were completing your doctorate, you were involved in the planning of Hebrew University’s Revivim Teacher training program?

A: Revivim remains a remarkable program. In 2000 the University launched an honors program to prepare teachers of Jewish studies for the non-religious, publicly-funded schools in Israel. The program recruits outstanding young people, in terms of both academic ability and commitment to education, who receive the best possible academic and professional preparation. The Melton Centre was involved from the beginning on the education side. In 2002 I was appointed to the role of Head of Education in Revivim. This role was challenging but also most enjoyable and rewarding. Many of those students are now in leading educational positions, and some have returned to serve on the faculty of the program.

Involvement in Revivim gave new significance to an earlier decision to change our name from The Melton Centre for Jewish Education in the Diaspora to simply, “for Jewish Education.”

Q: The change of name sparked a change in what The Melton Centre is about.

A: We think about Jewish Education as something both in the Diaspora and in Israel, with both differences and commonalities. Beyond that, it meant getting away from the idea of Israel being the hub of the Jewish world, and thinking of Israel and the Diaspora as engaging in a partnership. 

Our work in distance-learning is a part of this. The Senior Educators Program in its day brought educators for a year to Jerusalem. Now we have the technology and expertise to bring the University to educators around the world without uprooting them and their families. Our distance-learning MA still includes a face-to-face semester in Jerusalem. The direct encounter with the faculty, the University, Jerusalem and the country are an important part of what the program offers, although we have had to adapt during the continuing Covid crisis.

Q:  Online studies represent a generational shift. Is there a generational difference between young educators who attend the program nowadays, and your fellow educators whom you met back in the ‘80s, in terms of educational perspective?

A: One important difference is in the attitude toward Hebrew language as a key dimension of Jewish Education. The current International Program is being taught in English and Spanish, yet in the 1980s, all programs, including those for educators from overseas, were conducted in Hebrew. Therefore, a certain threshold of Hebrew proficiency was then a prerequisite.

At the time, Hebrew was seen as a central component of Jewish identity as the language of our people. I have a theory of my own: when the priority of acquiring Hebrew language was set aside, the discourse about Peoplehood and Israel Education emerged to fill this vacuum. It remains a good question if they can succeed in filling it.

Q: Tell us something about the courses you teach.

A: There are three main areas. One is work in what we call the Philosophy of Jewish Education, and Jewish Educational Thought. Within this field, I have a particular interest in the thought of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. The second area is about the teaching of classical texts, particularly rabbinic literature. The third area, which I have developed more recently, is the place of studying other religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, within Jewish Education.

Q: How do you think knowledge of Christianity and Islam contributes to understanding of Jewish Education?

A: Many aspects of Judaism developed with strong influences from Islam and Christianity. Sometimes that influence is in the form of resistance to these religions. For many centuries, Jewish communities existed within civilizations that were either Christian or Islamic. Young people cannot fully understand their Jewish culture nor the contemporary world without some understanding of these religions. In the State of Israel, for the first time, exists a Jewish sovereign state that must relate to these religions as minorities. This presents many political, cultural and educational challenges.

Q: I see that there are some Christian students in the international MA program.

A: There are places in the Christian world where there is an attraction to, and admiration of, Judaism. Sometimes this draws American Christians who identify with Israel and Judaism. We also draw some students from the Far East, from China and Korea. The addition of non-Jewish students of Jewish education, to a program where the majority of participants are active Jewish educators, adds an interesting and valuable perspective. In line with The Hebrew University as a whole, our Centre is open to all.