Section archive - Adult Education

Shrug off the “shoulds” of your grown up life and come back to a place where what you do for a living doesn’t define who you are, or how you live. A place where you’re never on your own, where play is important and a mid-day nap might just be the best way to spend the afternoon. Come back to the curious and courageous days of childhood. When every day held the mysteries of new friends, fantastic discoveries and audacious adventures. When we played with reckless abandon that left us with skinned knees that were always worth it. Come to Camp Nai Nai Nai, Waynesboro, PA -September 2nd – 5th, 2016, and be a kid again.

When we talk about education in our congregations and synagogues, we often look at what is cutting edge, new, and different. Our institutions emphasize that the future of education must involve smart boards, WiFi, and swiping screens. I agree that we must offer innovative entry points for learning. Still, we cannot forget the most important aspect of learning: our peers. Paired study, or chavrutah learning, has been a part of traditional rabbinic text study for centuries. This form of paired learning acknowledges that there is not distinct roles of student and teacher. Rather, each partner in the pair teaches one another, and learns from one another. Together, they may analyze texts, question interpretations or arguments, and suggest different conclusions. Learning with – and from – someone else allows us to open up our minds to see something in a way that we previously were not able. We are taught In Pirkei Avot 1:6: Find for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend. Through chavrutah study, we come to understand and appreciate that our closest friends are our greatest teachers.

Yiddish attracts a wide range of Jews and non-Jews alike, and for a variety of reasons—religion (it’s still the spoken language for most frum Ashkenazim), politics (a language and culture that affirms Ashkenazi Jews’ rootedness in Europe and the diaspora, rather than in Israel), culture and history (despite the past half-century’s renaissance in Yiddish scholarship, there’s still so, so much more left to study and explore), and much more. And although I didn’t know it when I applied to YIVO’s summer program, there’s a similarly wide a range of Yiddish programs in existence today for the nascent Yiddishist.

Registration is now open for the Paideia One Year Jewish Studies Program which offers a unique international Jewish studies experience during eight months in Stockholm, Sweden with the possibility of completing a 120 ECTS Master in Jewish Civilizations degree at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg, Germany. The studies are conducted five days a week, seven hours per day, under the instruction of world-renowned faculty. The program includes two year-long courses in Bible and Talmud; eleven intensive text courses running chronologically from Torah and Midrash, through Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Responsa Literature to Modern Jewish Philosophy and Literature; as well as various courses on Jewish life, calendar and holidays in relation to contemporary Jewish issues.