Center for Pastoral Education

The Center for Pastoral Education was established in 2009 with the goal of teaching seminary students—Jewish and non-Jewish—rabbis, and ordained clergy of all faiths the art of pastoral care. Studies at the center combine rigorous academic courses with the transformative learning process of Clinical Pastoral Education.

Accredited by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education to offer level I, level II and supervisory CPE, the Center for Pastoral Education at The Jewish Theological Seminary turns day treatment programs for the mentally ill, nursing homes, hospitals, senior housing, hospices and congregations into virtual classrooms.

The work of the center is possible thanks to the generous funding by the Charles H. Revson Foundation and the Booth Ferris Foundation.

Learn More:

The Center in the News

Read the article "Pastoral Education Edges Into Mainstream," published in the Jewish Week.

 

 

Policies and Procedures for all JTS CPE students

The Center for Pastoral Education meets all ACPE standards, including ensuring that students are informed in writing of all policies, procedures, rights, and responsibilities that pertain to them as participants in ACPE programs at JTS.

Charles H. Revson Foundation Workshop and Panel Debate:

“The Stranger at Our Gates”: Jewish Perspectives on Political and Religious Issues of Identity

Co-sponsored by the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies

Monday, April 23, 2012

Globalization has increased mobility and international collaboration, and facilitated the creation of transnational entities such as the European Union. At the same time, however, definitions of national identities have become more rigid. In the United States as well, there has been steadily increasing concern with questions of identity and citizenship. The dichotomy between “citizens” and “aliens” (whether “documented” or not) is ever apparent in debates about immigration policy, especially in arguments about access to public services such as education and health care.

Part of the increased attention on “who belongs” is caused by the overall global economic downturn. But the roots go deeper than “mere” economic considerations. The basic questions are: What normative principles define the rights of entry and access? What principles inform (or should inform) the criteria for membership and group identity? Since policy decisions in these areas often are moral decisions rooted in religious or quasi-religious arguments, it is important to examine how the public debate is informed by the underlying religious premises: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have much to say about the politics of inclusion and exclusion.

This workshop, a portion of a day-long conference devoted to issues of identity, will focus on the contribution of the Jewish experience to the debate about those issues. Jews have played the roles of both “self” and “other” in various times and places from the biblical period to the present. While Jewish law is protective of the rights of “strangers,” they may be met with suspicion nevertheless, and regarded as a threat to ethnic/religious identity and group solidarity.