Consortium for the Teaching of Hebrew Language and Culture

The Hebrew Consortium is proud to celebrate a major milestone in global Hebrew education: the international expansion of the Hebrew Olympiad.

Launched in 2025 in partnership with Tel Aviv University, this exciting initiative aims to foster a deep appreciation for the Hebrew language and its cultural significance among students worldwide.

The Hebrew Olympiad provides Hebrew learners of all backgrounds with an opportunity to demonstrate their language skills, connect across cultures, and engage with Hebrew as a living, vibrant language. The international track, developed in collaboration with the Hebrew Consortium, welcomed in spring 2025 over 250 participants from nine countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, Sweden, Cyprus, Switzerland, the UK, and Egypt.

We were thrilled to see

• 5,668 total participants from Israel and around the world
• 690 Arabic-speaking students in Israel joined for the first time
• 560 students reached the finals

An awards ceremony is set for September 12 in Israel, recognizing the finalists’ achievements.

This initiative is a meaningful step toward promoting Hebrew as a global language and creating inclusive pathways for learners from diverse communities. Whether students are engaging with Hebrew as heritage learners, language enthusiasts, or cultural explorers, the Olympiad highlights how Hebrew connects people across borders and backgrounds.

As we look ahead to the next Hebrew Olympiad, which will launch in December 2025 and will continue in its various stages through the spring of 2026, the Hebrew Consortium is committed to supporting and expanding this effort. We see it not only as a competition, but as a celebration of Hebrew culture, a language of history, identity, and vibrant contemporary expression.

Bringing Hebrew into public schools is about more than just language, it is about building cultural understanding, connection, and opportunity. By offering high-quality Hebrew education to students from all backgrounds, this initiative helps strengthen ties to Israeli culture and Jewish heritage, supports multilingual learning, and prepares students for a global society. Creating a strong network of trained teachers and accessible programs ensures that Hebrew language education can grow and thrive in communities across the country.

A central component of the initiative is the creation of a comprehensive, standards-based Hebrew language curriculum designed for middle and high school students in public schools. This curriculum addresses both content and pedagogy, ensuring high-quality instruction while supporting the professional growth of Hebrew language educators through ongoing development and training. The initiative seeks to elevate the field and build teaching capacity across a growing network of Hebrew language programs.

This initiative is a collaboration with Hebrew Public.

A collaboration for the advancement of Hebrew teaching and learning in the Greater Boston area, and to serve as a model for other regions in the U.S.

The primary goals of the collaboration are:

• Advocate for the importance of Modern Hebrew as a venue to shape the learners' Jewish identity and their connection to Israel, a message to be shared in the schools and in the community at large.

• Identify the best way to professionalize the teachers using the academic resources at Brandeis University to create professional development opportunities as well as a variety of degree programs. Collaboration members are also invited to use The Consortium for the Teaching of Hebrew Language and Culture, hosted by Brandeis, as a resource to advance their Hebrew agenda.

Additional goals include the development of better understanding of how to connect Jewish studies to Modern Hebrew and how to approach the teaching of Hebrew to students with special needs. A further goal is for the collaboration to work together to create a pool of quality teachers to serve in their schools.

The collaboration plans to meet as a group four times a year and on an ad hoc basis as special events and projects warrant.