Teaching to the Adults

for ourselves and for our children

There is a dearth of teaching geared towards mature adults in the frum community.

We are exceptionally good at the education of children and young adults. Given the challenges inherent to this project, the success rates are extraordinary. Even the most failed students of the k-12 system graduate with an impressive level of familiarity with the tradition. (Even if that familiarity isn't always successfully conceptualized as knowledge, it makes them at home and feel ownership in Yiddishkeit.)

Where we absolutely fail, or rather don't even try, is what happens after that. If you have a way of having open-hearted conversations with people over 25, or are yourself over 25 and know yourself, you will know immediately what I am talking about. As you grow into your late 20's, especially as you start a family and become responsible for them ,your understanding of the world takes on a different color. Go to your average Rav or Mashpia, and he still speaks to you as if that color doesn't exist.

Here there are forking paths. Put bluntly, you really need to decide if you still take any of this stuff you were taught seriously. Many come to see this as a choice between choosing a naive childlike view of life allowing you to remain dedicated, and an adult view which won't. Some choose deliberately to remain childish and naive, and this seems to be promoted by most public messaging. Some feel it is denigrating to their spirit to be naive, so they adopt a cynical split personality, adulting internally, but presenting as childish. Many go through a period of crisis when realizing the world doesn't work the way they were taught. Some take this question to the conclusion they must move to another world. Most end up at one of the two options after a period of turmoil.

Now there are various teachers who teach Torah at a theoretically adult level. Meaning simply Torah which can possibly speak to an adult human being without turning them into a child. Many teach Chassidus, Kabala, Philosophy, History, Meditation, Jewish thought, doing great work. Often these teachers resolve the mentioned crisis for someone, by showing them a way to progress in Torah and Avoda, which is beyond just being a good boy or good bochur. However, for the most part, this Torah is still taught in a childish way.

Many of the teachers themselves are fundamentally childish, having chosen the naive path. Others are fundamentally cynical, knowing the truth but disbelieving that seeking it can lead anywhere but disenchantment or social ostracization. Still, deeper Torah solves much. (Put bluntly, the critical faculty either isn't presented or isn't praised publicly in any of these Batei Midrash. There is even less belief that the sincere search for truth and honesty is itself holy, whole and sincere - and not a kind of cynicism or rebellion).

This isn't just a problem for adults. These adults are the teachers of the next generation of children. Even the great success of child-education cannot be sustained in a world where all teachers are either disaffected internally or childish and naive. I am watching this happen.

Ever since I have felt that crisis, I have dreamt of another dream. A place where we can ask questions and confront them as adults, knowing what we do not know, without that itself being a stage of rebellion.

I do not want to end up being the "oiber chochom," who knows how everyone else is wrong or evil - and “you know really Shlissel Challah is a Chrstian thing” and “the Rambam held of Aristotle.”

I want to allow honest pursuit of truth, hoping, believing and sometimes realizing that the tradition contains keys for opening fundamental issues of real life. I want to declare that wanting to know if something is true or can be proven is the beginning of wisdom and piety.

I want to declare also that knowing if something is true isn't enough and isn't the end, we want to know how it is true and live that truth, dancing and creating. I want to declare that our teachers and ancestors ancient and modern have something to teach us about that.

That the full meaning of Torah is Wisdom, that Wisdom has forever meant resolving fundamental human issues, in knowledge and in action. That none of this is in heaven or beyond the sea, but close to us seeking in sincerity and humility without lying to ourselves.

Five years ago I dropped myself fully into this project. I declared that there is a Beis Midrash, Iyun Lemachava. My aim is to learn and teach Torah for adults. My method is to study and teach the words and subjects of Jewish thought b'iyun. Critically and thoughtfully.

I have created hundreds of classes, source sheets, notes, videos, and group meetings. Much of it is presented online to everyone free of charge. These resources have reached thousands, many unknown to me. I have gained dozens of personal friends, who meet and learn weekly.

At the beginning I tried doing this part-time, to be able to work and support this myself. But Wisdom does not like competition, it is jealous and demands all the attention. The projects have also expanded to more locations and areas of teaching and of practice.

If any of the above speaks to you, please help me and my friends continue to create this project. For the adults, for their friends, for their children, and for their children.

Part 2 - The Network State

One more thing. A significant pitfall to be aware of is what happens to many teachers who try and I know mean well. They end up creating a machine whose main goal and method is organized around one person.

Now I believe every human being who knows something is worthy of being worshiped. But this doesn't mean that such worship is good for the worshippers nor for the greater community. There is a great challenge in not falling into these patterns.

What adults need is not one more rebbe, the new and improved formula. What we need is an entire constellation of rebbes. We need new-old forms of community, where every student is considered to be a vital node of the network which is the community.

This is why I called my project a "Beis Hamedrash". This being the ancient name for the kind of civilization we are. Not a chassidus or yeshiva circling around one person who gives the shiur or the shirayim. But, literally, a house of learning and of seeking.

We need not fall into the other side of professionalizing knowledge and relegating it to some "study hall", while the rest of the parts of life remain atomized and secularized. We need something which is on the one hand as full a community experience as the best tish,

and on the other hand as open and egalitarian a conversation as the round table panel of a conference. We need to create lifelong relationships and filial community around this Torah, while not becoming an intellectual photocopy machine or a spiritual person worship machine.

The actual way this looks is still to be determined. But:

(0) We know the model we look to is a Beis Midrash.

(1) We want to recognize and promote everyone who we see as working in our path, and see all our work as promoting this common progress, even when building our own thing.

(2) I recognize the basic fact that none of my stuff is my own, it is due to the living friends and teachers I meet and learn with and from. I expect everyone who passes through my stuff, to also be nourished by them, and try to give them the utmost honor.

I believe we suffer not from too much emunas chachamim but from too little. or rather, from purely vertical emnua"ch rather then the much more important horizontal emunach"h. I aim to give each of my learning friends the honor we are taught to give to Tanaaim and Rishonim. After all, we are engaged in the same project they were. Us with our flaws and conditions, as they were with theirs.

(3) In the most material sense too we are nourished by being part of the network, nobody owns all the money or connections, and the more we create this not only for ourselves but for others in the same line, we not only build our firm, but create a new line of business for everyone.

This current campaign is being matched by the Kerem foundation - Bein Torah Lchochma. Led by Yoel Werzberger, who brings lecturers in academic jewish studies to boro park, as well as daily advanced gemara shiurim, and has plans for many more projects to advance this general cause.

I hope there is much more collaboration in the future, even here on x, there are several true jewish thinkers of this generation. We must respect each other and live out the dream of being a beis medrash in the widest sense possible, amen.