AJR Rodef Shalom Certificate Program for Conflict Healing: Cultivating Clergy as Healers, Reconcilers, and Builders of Hope

Please find the application here. 

Applications are due by Tuesday, December 9^th at 12:00pm ET.  Please direct any questions or concerns to Rabbi Ira J. Dounn, AJR Dean of Strategic Initiatives, at [email protected]. 

Please consider joining the inaugural cohort of the AJR Rodef Shalom Certificate Program for Conflict Healing — and help shape a Jewish future where peace is not only a prayer, but a practiced art.

Learning Outcomes for Conflict Analysis, Healing, and Resolution

Heal the tensions that weigh on your community — and on you.

This program will equip you with the skills, frameworks, and inner grounding to face conflict not as failure, but as sacred opportunity.

• Learn community-based approaches to peacebuilding, rooted in Jewish ethics and global best practices.
• Develop strategies to foster trust and relationship repair — drawing on compassion, moral reasoning, and the deep wisdom of our tradition.
• Apply these insights to personal, family, communal, and even global conflicts, transforming tension into growth and reconciliation.

Care for your own spiritual and emotional well-being as you care for others.

Rabbis and cantors are often the first to be called and the last to rest. This program also focuses on you — your resilience, your self-knowledge, and your hope.

• Reflect on your values and emotional responses in conflict.
• Strengthen your awareness of your own needs, capacities, and challenges as a leader.
• Lean on a cohort of Jewish clergy who, like you, are navigating these same complexities with courage and heart.

Engage with a world-class scholar and profound practical learning.

• Study with Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin, one of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of conflict healing and reconciliation.
• Examine theories of conflict resolution through Jewish ethical and theological lenses.
• Combine rigorous academic study with reflective writing and case-based learning that speaks directly to your rabbinic or cantorial life.

Bring your learning home — to your congregation, your family, your people.

• Translate theory into practice through real-world applications in your community.
• Cultivate compassionate, ethical leadership that inspires teshuvah, tikkun, and renewed shalom.
• Become a voice of moral clarity and hope in a time of deep division.

Why This Program

The AJR Rodef Shalom Certificate Program for Conflict Healing is a transformative, cohort-based program designed for all ordained Jewish clergy who seek to integrate the art of peacebuilding into their spiritual leadership. Over one calendar year, participants learn together online — building skills to address communal tension, facilitate healing after conflict, and renew the bonds of belonging that sustain Jewish life.

Why Now

This is a moment of immense pressure on the Jewish world. We are witnessing rising antisemitism, polarization around politics and Israel, and burnout among our leaders. Clergy are being called upon to hold impossible pain — yet too often without the tools to transform it.

This program is a response to that call. It offers you a new way forward: proactive, compassionate, rooted in Jewish wisdom and informed by the best contemporary research in conflict healing. It will strengthen you, your community, and the future of Jewish leadership.

Conflict healing and reconciliation are not luxuries. In 5786, they are central to the sacred work of rodef shalom — the daily pursuit of peace.

Why Study with Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin

This program is led by Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin, one of the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners at the intersection of ethics, spirituality, and conflict transformation. Drawing on decades of peacebuilding work across war zones and divided communities, and as the author of Healing the Heart of Conflict and Compassionate Reasoning, Rabbi Dr. Gopin brings together the rigor of scholarship with the compassion of pastoral practice.

His Compassionate Reasoning framework helps clergy see conflict as a moral and spiritual practice — a process of listening, reframing, and awakening the ethical imagination. In this certificate program, Rabbi Dr. Gopin guides participants through a deeply Jewish and profoundly human journey: learning how to transform anger into insight, blame into responsibility, and pain into the possibility of repair.

Like his students around the world, you will find in his teaching a rare combination of intellectual depth and personal warmth — a model of how rabbis and cantors can become true healers of communal life.

Who Should Apply

Please find the application here.  Applications are due by Tuesday, December 9^th, at 12:00pm ET. 

This program welcomes all ordained rabbis and cantors who seek practical tools and spiritual renewal.

• Current congregational, campus, chaplaincy, educational, and organizational clergy.
• Retired rabbis and cantors eager for continued study and purpose.
• Recently ordained clergy ready to lead with courage and compassion.

AJR’s proudly pluralistic environment invites learning across difference, engaging clergy of diverse ideological and political perspectives in a shared commitment to peace and renewal.

Application Timeline:

Tuesday, December 9th, 12pm ET: Final Application Deadline.
Tuesday, December 15th-17th: Applicant Decisions Delivered.
Monday, December 22nd: Participant Confirmation Deadline.

Program Details

Dates: January 11^th, 2026 – December 20^th, 2026

Format: Fully online (mandatory attendance for all sessions)

Credential: Rodef Shalom Certificate Program in Conflict Healing (non-credit), Academy for Jewish Religion (AJR)

Tuition: $2,500 to cover the entire certificate program, including a $500 non-refundable deposit.

Schedule:

• Spring Semester: Mondays, 4:30-6:30pm ET, Weeks of Jan 18^th – Apr 13^th (breaks for Purim and Passover, and the week of March 9th).
• Fall Semester: Mondays, 4:30-6:30pm ET, Weeks of Oct 5^th – Dec 21^st (break Thanksgiving and week of November 9^th).
• Five all-day Sundays from 9am-5pm, online: January 11^th, March 22nd, May 3rd, August 9th, and December 20^th.

May this program strengthen your capacity to bring more shalom, shalvah, tikkun, and teshuvah to your communities, your families, and your own spiritual life as a leader and healer in Am Yisrael.