SHMA KOLEINU
Engaging Ways to Inhabit Life Spiritually
Rabbi Dr. Elie Holzer is the founding president and educational director of Shma Koleinu, a nonprofit institute registered in Israel.
Elie Holzer, Professor at Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Education and holder of the R. Dr. Ochs Chair for the Teaching of Jewish Religious Studies, is a leading scholar of dialogical, and spiritual text-based Jewish education. A foremost expert on Havruta text study, he received the U.S. National Jewish Book Award (2014) for A Philosophy of Havruta. He is also the author of Attuned Learning, Rabbinic Texts on Habits of the Heart in Learning Interactions, and editor of four volumes. His current research focuses on spiritual pedagogies for teaching Hasidic homilies, Contemplative Havruta study, and Renewed Hasidism as a path to post-critical Jewish religiosity. His forthcoming edited volume, Renewed Hasidic Spirituality: Teaching Hasidic Homilies in a Post-Secular World, will be published by Academic Studies Press.
Elie also serves on the faculty of the North American Mandel Teacher Educators Institute. He has taught in post-high school yeshiva programs as well as in a number of educational and academic institutions in the US and is particularly known for his scholarship and his teaching of the "Sfat Emet" a 19th century leading Hasidic master.
He was a co-founder of Shira Hadasha Congregation in Jerusalem and has been labeled as an academic spiritual activist and as a “davenologist,” referring to his ongoing efforts to create learning opportunities for individuals’ religious growth in and through prayer, song, and Hasidic text study.