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WHAT OUR STUDENTS HAVE TAUGHT ME David B. Starr, founding dean of Me'ah, has spent the past ten years developing Hebrew College's intensive, two-year, text-based adult Jewish learning program. Me'ah's exponential growth is due in large part to cultivating what Starr describes as the "magic" of adult learning. In this essay, he outlines methods and actions, including an overall philosophy of adult education, which have contributed to Me'ah's success and can be applied to other programs. Making Jewish study inspiring and engaging for adult learners is a challenge, he says, but when met directly and passionately, it yields literate, motivated Jews.
Several elements make Me'ah unique in adult Jewish learning. Academic methodology guides the program's curriculum and learning culture, and Jewish studies practitioners constitute the faculty. Faculty expect students to work hard and at a high level; students expect faculty to match those expectations in terms of their knowledge and their commitment to adult learning. Though based in synagogues, JCCs and at Hebrew College, Me'ah presses no sort of ideological or institutional agenda; it seeks rather to respect the autonomy of adult learners to ask questions and to question the answers they might receive. Most importantly, we trust that students are coming to Me'ah both to acquire information and to grow as human beings—that throughout the program they are constantly, even subconsciously, making connections between the cognitive and the affective dimensions. These defining characteristics lead me to offer some thoughts about what Me'ah can teach practitioners in adult Jewish learning. Some of these thoughts pertain to teachers, others to curriculum or to students. And that makes sense, because Me'ah is a total experience, a kind of culture—which, if we remember the biological use of the term, suggests an environment where growth occurs. Me'ah presses no sort of ideological or institutional agenda; it seeks rather to respect the autonomy of adult learners to ask questions and to question the answers they might receive. First, adult educators need their own teachers. One might think that a high-brow PhD bestrides the classroom like a colossus, a master of his domain. Quite to the contrary, any teacher, no matter how knowledgeable, should remember the talmudic adage, "More than I've learned from my teachers, or from my colleagues, have I learned from my students" (Taanit 7a). Maintaining relationships with mentors and colleagues unites Me'ah faculty and showcases a wonderful model of faculty invested not just in their class but in the mission of the larger communal initiative, around which they build a community of like-minded practitioners. Adult learning offers educators the chance to grow as they struggle to mediate scholarship and its ways of reading texts with the intellectual and existential goals of impassioned adult learners. Second, teachers become texts in their own right. We don't just transmit information, we become part of the distinctive learning dynamic of the social entity we call a "class." Students want to know about their teachers—their personal religious views and practices, what animates their passion for Judaism. Adult learning in this regard is always personal, never just business. One instructor brought her wedding pictures to show her class, who were intrigued by a journey that began with marriage into a Hasidic family and continued with graduate training in university-level Jewish studies. As adult students struggle with the theological implications of their learning, they often seek guidance by questioning their instructors' personal choices. In response, one instructor makes a point of promising that at the end of the year he will share how he reconciles his beliefs and practices, in particular how he lives in an Orthodox community as a practitioner of modern Bible criticism. On another level, teachers add something precious to their teaching when they focus on their particular scholarly interests. One instructor emphasizes the centrality of mysticism in medieval Jewish life, even exposing his students to mystical teachings, including meditation. Me'ah depends upon its faculty and their success in teaching and inspiring their students. In a deeper sense, the faculty accept and affirm the mission of personal and communal transformation that rests at the heart of the program. Years ago, scholarly rabbis wanted to engage Jews intellectually; today communal-minded scholars want to connect personally to their students, as they should. Third, educators need to clarify for themselves their goals for students—what they want them to learn and why the learning matters. Without answering the implicit "so what?" question, educators' subject knowledge and teaching skill will be for naught. They must know how to communicate with and motivate students. Student learning takes several forms: absorption of information, flashes of insight or new ways of thinking about things. All of these modes are valuable, and each student learns in his or her own way. The great teacher figures out how to reach each learner in the manner to which each is most receptive.
Our students are "customers," but they're not always right; sensitive listening enables educators to figure out the deeper issues behind a student's comment. In that sense, educators lead, rather than follow students. For example, an MIT-trained student at the onset of one of my classes dismissed Hasidism as primitivism. In response, I asked the class to bracket their late-20th-century skepticism and try to read "foreign" texts from another time and sensibility in context—to get inside the text first and then critique it. Which brings me to my final thought: Jewish education fails if it tries to be all things to all people. Creative and successful education reflects a coherent worldview; it involves a commitment—on the part of teachers and students—to following one's vision. Me'ah rests upon a commitment to openness, and to the belief that our texts, ideas and experience constitute a core Jewish source of values and practices. If teachers don't believe in what they're doing and why, students won't either. The Babylonian Talmud teaches that truth is God's seal. As much as Me'ah rests upon knowledge and critical inquiry, in the end it also requires passion on the part of both teachers and students—passion for truth and one's tradition. RELATED STORY: Ten Years Strong |
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My colleague, Harvard professor Jay Harris, likes to say to fellow Me'ah instructors: "Never talk down to students. You know more than they do, but they may be smarter than you are." As I write these lines, ten years of Me'ah and many specific encounters bear witness to the truth of Jay's adage: the students who once refused to allow a teacher to blur the line between the peshat reading of a biblical text and a midrashic understanding of that text; the student who asked, if the Babylonian Talmud is such a problematic canonical text that often confuses as much as it clarifies "correct" beliefs and practices, why didn't medieval Jews create a new canon to supplement it the way the Tannaitic rabbis created the Oral Torah to supplement the Written Torah; and other stories too numerous to recount. All testify to the magic of learning taught by and for adults. That means an education that respects the integrity of the adult learner, at the same time respecting the seriousness of Jewish culture and civilization.
Fourth, all educators need to learn how to listen, to hear and to evaluate what students say to them. Me'ah creates an environment that can frustrate students who may value answers more than questions, certainties more than doubts. One student told us that, after a year of Bible study, "I feel as if I'm wandering theologically. Because I read the Bible differently now, I'm not sure what I believe about God." That uncertainty requires no quick fix on the part of the instructor; rather, it deserves a thoughtful response indicating the teacher understands how challenging serious adult learning can be.