Basauri Z. Establishment and Development of Modern Jewish Theological Education.

The author of the dissertation considers the process of establishment and development of modern Jewish theological education. The author starts with the analyzis of the literature on problems of religious education in general and Jewish religious and theological education in particular. The author's definition of the notion "Jewish theological education" is based on the application of religious education typology suggested by Russian scholar Fedor Kozyrev. The important role in the development of the Jewish education is given to the mitzvah Talmud Torah (Torah study) which is believed to encompass all the possible knowledge of the world. The author offers a short historical outline of the development and functioning of traditional yeshivas and semikhah. The transformation of the Jewish theological education in Western Europe in the 19th century was influenced greatly by the representatives of Haskalah (Moses Mendelsohn and others). The maskilim proposed arguments to support the idea of inclusion of the European Jewish population to the surrounding cultural millieu. Also the representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums offered the scientific foundations for the reformed Jewish educational system, applying critical methods of the European sciences to the study of Judaism. A new type of theological educational institutions soon appeared in Breslau - Jewish Theological Seminary, which tried to combine the study of traditional Jewish disciplines (Torah, Talmud, Halakhah) with so-called secular disciplines. The author analyzes and compares educational curricula for rabbi's preparation in theological seminaries of different modern denominations in Judaism (rabbinical department at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion of Reform Judaism, rabbinical institute of Jewish Theological Seminary of Conservative Judaism, Rabi Izhak Elkhanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University of Modern Orthodoxy, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College). The research shows that the more liberal a certain Jewish denomination is the more secular its curriculum for rabbis is.