Location Jerusalem
Academic Programs
Ancient Philology
Near Eastern Languages
Fluency in Ancient Greek
Language Courses
Koine Greek
Biblical Hebrew
Latin
Sumerian
Classical Syriac
Spoken Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Hebrew (Ulpan)
Director Prof. Christophe Rico
Polis – The Jerusalem Institute of Languages and Humanities is a non-profit academic institution based in Jerusalem, Israel. It was founded in 2011 by an international group of scholars who aimed at a renewal of the humanities through the study of Western and Eastern cultural sources.
Sharing the conviction that languages are the key to our cultural and spiritual heritage, these scholars sensed a need for change in the way ancient languages have been taught since the 19th century. With this in mind, they developed a teaching method intended to allow true language acquisition.
Drawing from the most recent developments in Applied Linguistics and from the Israeli expertise in teaching Modern Hebrew (the Ulpan method), the Polis method attempts to teach the so-called "dead languages" the same way modern languages are usually taught: in a monolingual, full-immersive environment.
It is located in Musrara, near the Old City of Jerusalem.
The Institute was registered in 2011 (cfr. Non Profit Registry (in Hebrew)) and opened Modern Hebrew and Arabic courses along with Ancient Greek throughout the year. The main idea was to teach ancient languages as living ones, and to put together teachers of different languages in order to share techniques between them. They soon realized the importance of full immersion during the lessons in the language taught, with both modern and ancient languages. They counted especially on the methods for teaching Modern Hebrew in Israel and on the experience of Prof. Christophe Rico teaching Ancient Greek.
The main reason for running this activity as a non-profit organization was to foster the culture of dialogue through languages to as many people as possible. It soon became a contribution to better understanding of the different ethnic and religious groups present in Jerusalem.
In 2013, the Institute opened a Master's program in ancient Philology, which brought together several students and scholars from the US and Europe.