Hadar Institute

Mission: Hadar empowers Jews to create and sustain vibrant, practicing, egalitarian communities of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed.

Vision: Jews, in communities throughout the United States, Israel, and the world, are living meaningful lives of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed.

Impact Statement: Hadar’s strategy to realize our vision has two parts; each is crucial for the realization of our ultimate goal: (1) Building a core of individuals and communities that lives out our vision of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed, and (2) Ensuring that this core radiates out to those in the larger Jewish community who can participate in and shape its vision.

Hadar’s voice, deeply rooted in Jewish texts and traditions, offers a creative response to contemporary questions and challenges. Hadar is a leader in the field of Jewish education and community building, engaging diverse populations in serious Jewish learning with curiosity, creativity and conviction.

To achieve our mission, Hadar has three overarching programmatic strategies:

1. Immersive Experiences: We believe that immersive experiences are key for generating the kind of intensity required to navigate today’s world Jewishly. Hadar’s immersive programs are multi-day experiences that are characterized by their holistic nature.
2. Support Alumni and Communities working to achieve our mission: The ultimate success of Hadar’s vision depends on a grass-roots manifestation of our vision in communities. We work to build networks and strengthen communities on the ground throughout the United States and Israel.
3. A Focus on Content: In person and online, offering a vision of Torah that is uncompromisingly honest, spiritually meaningful, and socially responsible. This is central to our outward-facing, broad vision for the role of Torah and Jewish content in the larger Jewish community.

Founded in 2006 with a modest 8-week summer program serving 18 students, we have grown dramatically in response to demand for our programs and content. Hundreds of students have completed our year-long and summer intensive learning programs, and thousands have joined us for our week-long and month-long immersive programs. Alumni of these programs return to their home communities ready to make a difference. Our alumni micro-grant initiative, which funds innovative projects around the country, has had a positive impact on thousands of Jews in a broad range of communities.

Our daytime and evening lectures and classes for the broader community welcome tens of thousands of people, in-person, every year. And over 2,000 people have learned with us through Project Zug (www.projectzug.org), our online learning platform that connects Jews around the world with each other through weekly one-on-one havruta (partner) learning. Hundreds of thousands of people learn with us each year through our podcasts, essays, online classes, prayer recordings, and other web resources available on www.hadar.org. There have been over two million downloads of these resources in the last three years, and we add new materials, and attract new online students, every day.

Hadar is unique – we have the only full-time, gender-egalitarian yeshiva in North America. We welcome people from all walks of Jewish life – teens to great-grandparents, of all denominational backgrounds, from around the country (and around the world). We have programs for college students, for music-lovers who seek to build spiritual community through singing, and for lay people who simply enjoy Torah study. Rabbis, educators, and Jewish professionals seek our guidance in how to build dynamic communities, and we now offer programs for them as well.