Advanced Certificate Programs in Humanities Studies

The Higher Certificate in Christian Ministry provides Christians with foundational and practical training to equip and empower them to build God’s kingdom in their sphere of influence. -

The Certificate in Theology is a 15 module, 120-credit programme and may be completed in one year of full-time study. -

The path we walk at the Ziegler School in our study of Jewish sacred texts is both new and old, fresh and well worn. We read writings that centuries of Jews have read, and we read them in dialogue with the generations of scholars – Geonim, Rishonim and Ahronim – who have read them before us. We also read those texts through lenses that have been ground by contemporary scholars in the Universities and Rabbinical seminaries in this country, in Israel, and around the world. The directive of Kohelet guides us: It is best that you grasp the one without letting go of the other, for the one who reveres God will attend to both (Kohelet 7:18). We understand the study of Jewish sacred writings as a spiritual practice. In this we stand in the long tradition ranging from the Talmud through the great centers of learning in Franco-Germany, Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, through the great yeshivot of Eastern Europe and into our own times. “After the Temple was destroyed, God was found in the four cubits of halakhic discussion (Berakhot 8a),” teach the Sages, who also assert “If you would learn to know the One at whose word the world came into being, learn aggadah (Sifrei Devarim, Piska 94).” The intellectual pursuit of subtle distinctions in halakhah, the close readings of Midrash and parshanut, or the joys of philosophical theology is itself a spiritual exercise. The intellectual and the spiritual are one on this path. -

At Zaytuna College, we have set out to do our best at restoring the broad-based, holistic tradition of what in the West was called the liberal arts, and in the Muslim civilization was known as comprehensive studies (al-dirāsāt al-jāmi¢ah), which lead one to become an adīb, which approximates the English concept of the erudite gentleman. -