Many Jewish educators struggle to use Tanakh for its greatest gift: the fashioning of committed Jews. Teachers could guide their students to go down a joyful and fruitful path by inviting students to a world of wonder and belief.
The hierarchical transference of information, the reduction of study to reading comprehension and the focus on decoding are insufficient to create deep believers. When the classroom expectation is rote learning, rather than absorbing wisdom, students come to parrot - but not accept - principles espoused by their teachers, leading to what Chovot HaLevavot calls "a belief in God in tongue only.” Students are studying to please their teachers and parents instead of developing deep belief.
Key to developing students into deep believers starts with teachers who create an environment of questioning without shame, where students learn to look for patterns, understand the characters’ choices and find connections to the text. Asking insightful questions involves the student taking a risk and feeling vulnerable. Students who feel respected and safe begin to trust themselves as learners and take risks that build confidence. This in turn fosters motivation and the desire to probe for meaning such that students discover the genius behind the Author and the authors in Tanakh. The feeling of ownership of and kinship with the text deepens the spiritual journey. Why? A person’s spiritual journey is lived in the first person and learning should guide the student there.
A teacher asks the students who are studying the first chapter of Bereishit to write thirty questions (at least four for each day of Creation) about what seems challenging in the text. The exercise calls on students to engage with the text. It sends the message to students that Jewish learning involves questioning.
When students see patterns, generate questions and analyze ideas in Tanakh, students grasp the text on their own terms and build belief.
Chovot HaLevavot points out that equalizing "a belief in God in tongue” with “a belief in the heart through one’s own proofs and rational investigation” leads to a complete Jew. In order to accomplish Chovot HaLevavot’s goal,educators must organize the mechanics of learning Tanakh in a way that harnesses its internal power. Consider a pedagogical approach that prioritizes engagement over compliance and spirituality over discrete fact acquisition. Start with the goal of fostering spiritual characteristics and backward design the lesson from there. Create a classroom of emotional security and safe questioning. Design assignments that allow for greater student autonomy and deep engagement in the text. Imagine you are guiding students to want to originate their own proofs and rational investigations. When teachers reach higher than decoding and reading comprehension in Tanakh, students begin a meaningful journey that will last a lifetime.
Originally published in Prizmah