Rabbi Yona Goodman, National Director of Education in the Yeshivot and Ulpanot Bnei Akiva Educational Network in Israel and the former director general of the national Bnei Akiva movement in Israel, will speak at Congregation Beth Aaron on Shabbat, May 21, at 6:55 p.m. His topic will be “In What State Is ‘The State’? The Challenges Facing the Religious Zionist Movement in Israel Today: An Israeli Rabbi and Educator’s Insight.”
Rabbi Yona Goodman was born in the United States and made aliyah as a teenager. In the last 20 years, Rabbi Goodman has taught at Orot Israel College. Rav Goodman studied in the Golan Heights Hesder Yeshiva and served in the Israeli army as a tank commander. He is the former director general of the national Bnei Akiva movement in Israel. Rabbi Goodman gives courses for the Israeli board of education to high school principals, high school supervisors and others about ways to enhance Jewish values in the lives of our children.
In the last decade, he has participated in many different national committees that checked or developed programs or policies in the Israeli school system. Among them, he served on a committee that restructured the teacher training programs for religious teachers; a committee that constructed a plan for teaching Jewish philosophy (Machshevet Yisrael); and a committee that checked the unique needs of education for girls. He is a senior staff member in Mahut, which is a national center that specializes in helping schools or communities immediately after terror attacks.
For the last 15 years, he has been broadcasting a five-minute weekly spot on the subject of education on Israeli National Radio. He is a member on the board of directors of the international movement of Religious Zionist Kollels (Torah MiTzion).
Beth Aaron is located at 950 Queen Anne Rd. in Teaneck.
Rabbi Goodman holds an MA in Jewish education and is a doctoral candidate at Hebrew U. He specializes in guiding teachers and parents whose teenage children have begun to deviate from the Jewish way of life.
