Wisdom from All My Teachers: Challenges and Initiatives in Contemporary Torah Education

The twenty essays in this volume are both descriptive and prescriptive. The authors represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Torah educators; both men and women, teachers with but a few years of experience, side by side with the leading figures in Torah education, both in Israel and throughout the Diaspora. In this book, innovative Jewish educators explore the nature of Torah study and its relationship to the love and awe of God, personal moral development; the role of worldly wisdom in Torah education; the cultivation of the student's soul; the challenges of teaching students or adults who do not fit into the mold of the traditional curriculum; deliberations on the teaching of Talmud and Bible to this generation; the use of philosophy and aggadah in the yeshiva curriculum, and the place of the Israel experience in shaping the religious personality. This book combines erudition with deep concern for the challenges facing the field of Jewish education in the contemporary world.

Prof. Susan Handelman, a member of ATID's faculty and academic board, is Professor of English Literature at Bar-Ilan University, and taught literature and Jewish studies at the University of Maryland for many years. Her books include The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory and Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Scholem, Benjamin and Levinas. She recently co-edited Torah of the Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts (Urim).

Rabbi Jeffrey Saks is the founding director of ATID. He received ordination and an M.A. from Yeshiva University, NY, and was previously the director of Yeshivat HaMivtar in Efrat. He was a participant in the Jerusalem Fellows program for senior educators, and has published articles in Tradition, The Torah U-Madda Journal, and the Journal of Jewish Education. Rabbi Saks lives in Efrat with his wife, Ilana, and their children.