The Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute (JSLI) was the first fully online rabbinical and cantorial school. Rabbi and Cantor Steven Blane founded it more than 15 years ago to train rabbis and cantors who could serve the Jews that traditional institutions often miss: interfaith families, unaffiliated Jews, and people who love Jewish life but don’t feel at home in a conventional synagogue. Since then JSLI has ordained more than 250 rabbis and cantors, and in our most recent alumni survey almost 90% of the graduates who responded are working as spiritual leaders.
Why JSLI exists
For most of modern history, becoming a rabbi meant five years of full-time study, a move to the seminary’s city, and a bill that could run well into six figures. That shut out a lot of good people: the teacher, the therapist, the lay leader who already led services every Shabbat, the person who felt the call at 50. Rabbi Blane built JSLI so those people could answer the call without giving up the lives they’d built. You can read his story on the About Rabbi Steven Blane page.
How JSLI works
Our Rabbinical School is one year of live weekly classes by video conference, and our Cantorial School is two years of small-group study with an experienced cantor. Students stay in their homes, their jobs and their communities. Each class opens with prayer, studies the week’s Torah portion, and then gets into the real work of the rabbinate: halacha, liturgy, lifecycle, pastoral care, and how to officiate at weddings, funerals and b’nai mitzvah. Students graduate at our online Ordination Shabbaton, held each June and December, with family and friends joining from anywhere.
What we believe
JSLI is pluralistic and trans-denominational. Our students come from every Jewish movement and from no movement at all. Our guiding philosophy is Rabbi Blane’s Jewish Universalism, which welcomes everyone and honors every Jewish path, but graduates are free to follow their own. Every student and graduate agrees to the JSLI Code of Ethics.
Where our graduates serve
JSLI rabbis and cantors lead established synagogues, small and lay-led congregations, and online communities. They serve as hospital and hospice chaplains, educators, and independent rabbis who officiate lifecycle events for families who have no synagogue. Meet some of them in our Graduate Stories, on our Testimonials page and in our News, and meet our Faculty, most of whom are JSLI graduates themselves.
A community after ordination
Ordination isn’t the end. Graduates are welcome at our weekly video conferences to talk through what’s happening in their pulpits, at yearly alumni gatherings, and in our private Facebook group, where the whole JSLI community shares ideas and support.