About Us

3 Key Points About Madrasa

For the past ten years, Madrasa has been teaching Jewish and Arab Israelis to communicate in the local language of their neighbors

200,000 Israelis

Currently more than 200,000 Israelis are learning useful Arabic through Madrasa’s in-person and online course offerings. In all of its programs, most of Madrasa’s teachers are  native speakers trained in Madrasa’s educational approach.

Since October 7th

The biggest leap in Madrasa enrollment took place in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, across ALL sectors of Israeli society: secular and religious, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, right and left.

largest Non-Profit

Madrasa is the first and largest national organization helping Israelis learn Arabic on a large scale, and the only one that is a non-profit.

Madrasa Leadership Team

“The secret to change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
— Socrates

Gilad Sevitt

Founder & CEO

Daniel Dotan

Co-Founder and CEO

Louise Drori

Marketing and Business Development

Ofir Lugasi

Digital Manager

Ahmad Suleiman

Senior Teacher and Pedagogical Mentor

Michal Dekel

Head of Language Activities Operations

Yaniv Gershon

Chief Technology Officer

Ella Danino

Community Courses Manager

Renana Mansour

Teacher and content developer

How we do it?

1. Open and free online school

4 online courses

4 MOOCS (online courses) with hundreds of videos, thousands of exercises, discussion forums, and educational games.

A mobile app

A mobile app (beta version) that allows our students to learn from our courses and practice what they learn.

Content library

The largest content library in Israel for learning spoken Arabic.

Dictionary

The largest spoken Arabic dictionary for Hebrew speakers.

Podcasts

Over 22,500 downloads a month!

2. Social Media and Content

We publishes dozens of educational and cultural posts every month on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and TikTok channels.

We also reach a large audience through educational weekly spots on national radio channels. Our content reaches over 1,000,000 different people every year!

3. Courses, Meet-ups and Educational Projects

We operates a long series of learning and educational activities around the Arabic language and culture. Alongside our national-level projects and collaborations, we offer courses taught by 35 talented teachers from all over the country, 90% of our teachers are Arabs. 

״Ahlan״

10-14 year old Arab students from East Jerusalem teach children  in over 30 schools in West Jerusalem, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Municipality.

Teaching Public Servants

We collaborate with over 10 governmental ministries, the Teacher’s Union and the Israel Medical Association, to promote better public services and diverse working environments.

‘Speaking Arabic’

National program with the Israeli Student Union in which over 50 Arab students teach thousands of Jewish students to communicate in Arabic in subsidized courses for a stipend.

“Desert Stars”

Desert Stars is a  program for Bedouin students who teach Arabic in Beersheva, in one-on-one meetings and communal meetups.

Learn to communicate in the community

People of all ages from all sectors of society, meet in community centers to practice the language. This breaks stigmas as they learn to get to know each other with the guidance of our teachers. In 2022 we held over 250 courses around the country, where over 3,000 Israelis learned to communicate in Arabic.