After the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E., the sacrifices were replaced by the study and interpretation of the Torah, the practice of its commandments, and communal prayer. This allowed Judaism to survive despite dispersion and recurring persecution over millennia. Since then, Jewish thought has been recorded in writing, forming a vast and rich culture. This unique worldview should be enlisted in the education of our children and young people.

Torah for Everyone

In Pirkei Avot (5:21), the Tanna (one of the Sages of the Mishna) Yehuda Ben Tema suggests that the study of the Written Torah should begin at the age of five; Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:11) adds that it should occupy one-third of the daily study schedule. Thinkers from all religious currents emphasize the value of the Torah. For Abraham Joshua Heschel, it serves as guidance for internalizing love as the driving force of humanity. Eugene Borowitz states that the Torah embodies "the feeling of the mitzvah," the sense that God wants us to act in a way that aligns with Him. According to Mordecai Kaplan, the scope of the Torah “is comprehensive and includes all fundamental elements of human culture,” and it represents “a complete Jewish civilization.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks refutes the notion that secular Jews (particularly Israelis) lack faith, describing them instead as “believers, children of believers” who “speak in the language of prophetic ideals.” However, even if we acknowledge a lack of faith in God amongst this sector, Eliezer Schweid finds that faith is nascent in the questions, “How does a person relate to their life? And how do they orient themselves toward the future?” These are questions that Torah study invites individuals to explore - and likely find answers to - regardless of religious affiliation or belief in its Divine origin.

Michael Rosenak, a philosopher of Jewish education, clarifies that, unlike religious study, religious education promotes moral and personal development through engagement with foundational Jewish texts without necessarily requiring faith.               

Developing a Sense of Belonging to the Jewish People

David Hartman writes: “The first principle of Jewish education is that when you learn Torah, you become part of an interpretive community.” The entire chain of generations that has debated, interpreted, and helped to understand the Torah, and that continues to analyze it in search of wisdom applicable to contemporary issues, forms a community that transcends time. Millions of Jews around the world, following a tradition thousands of years old, study and discuss the weekly parashah, forming an enormous interpretive community.

Furthermore, as Hartman states, “He who studies the Torah possesses the Torah.” Studying it makes us its inheritors and grants us a share of its wisdom—a concept closely linked to knowledge appropriation as an educational objective. Therefore, studying the Torah is one of the strongest builders of Jewish identity, as it entails becoming part of a millennia-old - and yet also contemporary - interpretive community, and it also means becoming a “co-owner” of the Torah.

Lawrence Kohlberg demonstrated that schoolchildren exposed to the analysis and discussion of moral dilemmas that require reasoning at a level slightly beyond their current moral development are spurred to advance. The value judgment method can be complemented or replaced by approaches such as values clarification or the inquiry approach when studying biblical texts, focusing on episodes in which characters face moral dilemmas. How these are addressed and the decisions they make provide valuable material for fostering students' moral development.

Guidance for Self-Knowledge and Personal Growth in Adolescents

Adolescents go through a stage in which the need for social acceptance and the search for personal identity may come into conflict. Jewish tradition offers valuable tools to guide them. Barry Holtz proposes an approach called moralistic didactics, which consists of identifying significant messages for our lives in biblical texts.

The Midrash states that there are “seventy faces to the Torah” (Bereshit Rabbah 13:16), alluding to its multiple interpretations. By exploring biblical narratives and drawing from a wealth of commentary—whether Talmudic, medieval, traditional, or contemporary—we can encourage young people to reflect on themselves and their surroundings, guiding and inspiring them to commit to their personal growth.

The Method: Meaningful Learning

Indeed, “the Torah is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). It is essential for our students to understand this, and it is our responsibility to help them access its wisdom.

Rosenak explains that the educator “must establish a connection through which children and young people can understand and want to learn.” In this vein, Holtz highlights the tension between the authenticity of the Torah and the student’s perspective - in other words, the need for relevance. If the text is not relevant to the student, we will not capture their attention, and the process of knowledge appropriation will be lost from the outset.

In Hebrew, the term for a youth, or young man (bachur), is related to the term for “choice” (bechirah), suggesting that youth is characterized by the process of choosing who to become. As part of this process, young people seek and select role models. In the past, these were primarily close adults. Today, however, educators compete with fleeting trends, flashy but often hollow content, and an overwhelming speed of information that is frequently non-constructive.

In every educational process, the student must take ownership of knowledge. The language used should not be disconnected from what excites or concerns them. Hartman urges educators to ask themselves: Have we created receptivity for knowledge? Have we established the conditions for this learning to be meaningful and engaging?

In Torah education, it will be necessary to "invert the order," as Franz Rosenzweig suggests: without losing sight of the goal, the teacher should begin with a question of great relevance to the students and, together with them, seek answers in the text.

Conclusion

If the Torah is “the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob” (Deuteronomy 33:4), it belongs to the entire people of Israel, regardless of their religious orientation. We can and must educate through the Torah, guiding our students to find life’s answers within it and shaping them into righteous individuals—without creating a parallel world in the process. “Educate the youth according to their way, and even when they grow old, they will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

References

• Ahad Ha’am, This Is Not the Way.
• Blag, M. & Kohlberg, L., The Effects of Classroom Moral Discussion Upon Children's Level of Moral Judgment.
• Borowitz, Eugene, Studies in the Meaning of Judaism.
• Hartman, David, The Interpretative Tradition.
• Heschel, Joshua, God in Search of Man.
• Holtz, Barry, Textual Knowledge: Teaching the Bible in Theory and in Practice.
• Kaplan, Mordecai, Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American Jewish Life.
• Lipman, Matthew, Philosophy in the Classroom.
• Rosenak, Michael, Teaching Jewish Values: A Conceptual Guide.
• Rosenak, Michael, Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular Society.
• Rosenzweig, Franz, Upon Opening the Jüdisches Lehrhaus "On Jewish Learning".
• Sacks, Jonathan, A Judaism Engaged with the World. Office of the Chief Rabbi.
• Schweid, Eliezer, The Faith and Culture of the Jewish People.
• Simon, Sidney; Howe, Leland; Kirschenbaum, Howard, Values Clarification.