How Should Educators Think about Studying Sacred Jewish Texts with Adults?

Spring 2026 | Sivan 5786 Studying Jewish texts with adults is a gift. There is so often a palpable sense of discovery, sometimes an electricity in the room. There are personal chidushim, insights, and, ideally, a sense of student-text connection. We often get excited about designing the class, too. As educators, we have the opportunity to share texts and interpretations that are deeply meaningful to us. We can experiment with new connections among texts, preparing a shiur specifically in order to look at two texts in conversation for the first time. We can bring our questions and our best ideas about sacred Jewish texts to our students. So often, we look for a perfect text and build our class from there. We focus on what we have to say, wanting to bring forward a specific message or idea, to test material, and to think something through. We focus on our own chidushim. An Educator's Voice: 1