Rabbi Dr. Jay Goldmintz, Lifnai Vlifnim Lev HaParshah Series Editor
Rabbi Yehuda Chanales, Lifnai Vlifnim Director
There is something beautiful about the way the Jewish family gathers around the Shabbat table. It’s a time filled with warmth, laughter, and Torah. Yet sometimes, the divrei Torah we share can feel more like schoolwork than meaningful conversation.
Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon zt”l, the Mashgiach of Lakewood’s Beis Medrash Govoha, once lamented that “the Shabbos table has become one big examination board.” Children arrive home from school armed with parshah sheets and quizzes, while parents are tasked with reviewing, testing or simply listening. Thankfully, this is beginning to change. Across the Jewish world, schools recognize that teaching Torah means more than covering content. It means reaching the hearts of our students. More and more educators know that Torah learning must speak not only to the mind but also to the neshamah — to the inner world of our students who are searching for meaning, purpose, and connection.
More than ever before, students are in search of meaning and purpose. In truth, regardless of the societal trends at play today, when it comes to adolescence, research now shows that meaning making is an innate part of the developmental process. The human being at this age craves spirituality, a sense of transcendence, something bigger than the self that can direct one’s life journey. In the past, young people were often left to themselves to figure this out on their own. Today, we are aware that parents and teachers can and need to play a much more significant proactive role in supporting our children’s search for meaning, especially religious meaning.
But we also know that this is not something that we can “teach” frontally. Nor can we accomplish it only through powerful inspirational moments. Instead, this meaning making needs to be part and parcel of adolescents’ lives and learning, their inner world.
Over the past four years, Lifnai Vlifnim has developed a program for middle school and high school students to grow their inner religious world in an ongoing way. We seek to develop a school culture that slows things down, encourages deep listening, and provides opportunities for members of the school community to understand each other better. These traits are the building blocks of engaging in religious meaning making which encourage as an added layer, not instead of regular rigorous Torah learning. Whether called Lev Hashavua, Vaad, Hadracha or something else, over a thousand students and hundreds of teachers in dozens of schools across North America and beyond engage in regular sessions focused more explicitly on their relationship with Hashem and others. These periods have become the catalyst for a new language of ruchaniyut, spirituality, that has elevated Torah classrooms, tefillah, and hallways.
Nevertheless, almost all contemporary social science research indicates that the most important and critical locus for the religious development of children and adolescents lies not in the school but in the family. And within the Jewish family, the most important locus of conversation and transmission of religious values takes place at the Shabbat table. Too often, however, discussions about the parshah end up focusing only on facts or big ideas and far less time speaking about how the parshah impacts our hearts and souls, our connections to one another and our relationship with Hashem. As the founder of Lifnai Vlifnim, Rav Dov Singer, often points out, the word kriah in kriat haTorah means “reading” the Torah, but it can also be related to the Hebrew word for “calling out;” another goal of kriat ha-Torah, then, is for each of us to ask ourselves, what is the Torah calling out to me? What message does it have for me personally and for the people with whom I interact the most? As Rav Yehuda Amital would say, “Don’t ask ‘What Torah did you learn today,’ but ‘What did the Torah teach you today?’”
We know, too, that the transmission of Jewish values requires a dialogue, a bidirectional conversation in which the adults share their own inner world with children. That is a large part of the training that faculty in our programs undergo, learning how to share, within limits, what was traditionally kept private or hidden. And yet, as the Gemara tells us, ‘Things that come from the heart, penetrate the heart.’ Only when we model our own willingness to be open, can we expect that our children will learn and be ready to do the same.
Through our weekly Lev HaParshah series, we hope to provide you with a portal to heart to heart conversations, ones that begin in the parshah but are a gateway to talking about our family members’ connections to themselves, to one another and to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We thus seek to help facilitate a deeper authentic transmission of values, one that includes not only facts but the heart of the parshah and integrates it with the experiences and personalities of your family. We look forward to your feedback and ideas as we partner to bring Lev HaParsha to your home.
For questions, comments, sponsorships or to receive Lev HaParshah in your inbox, e-mail levhaparsha@lifnaivfinim.org or visit www.lifnaivlinfim.org
