“The picture I want people to have in their mind for what a yeshivah, a beit midrash, can be,” he said, “is two people sat opposite each other, having a joyful conversation with voices from the past and a joyful conversation with each other in the present – surrounded by others doing the same and inspired by wonderful teachers who are also doing the same.”
What we Jews can do best, is conversational learning
While the archetype of academic study might be burning the midnight oil alone in a library, in Judaism it is the animated debates of the beit midrash, or of two people trying to wrestle meaning out of an open book together.
“I think a lot of us know on some level that what Judaism does best, and what we Jews can do best, is conversational learning,” he said. “This is the stuff that is really in our cultural DNA – a learning that is communal, a learning that isn’t lonely, isn’t academic.
"Therefore any of us can do it and anyone with this new style of yeshivah should feel invited to step in and begin their relationship with Torah and other folk.”
When he mentions the word “invited”, his hands instinctively stretch out in a gesture of welcome.
“For me when I hear beit midrash, I hear the two words that constitute the term – the first being ‘home’. We want to create a community of learners, a place where we can engage in Torah, where we can each feel at home. I also hear the word midrash and, for me, midrash as expressed when that word is used for the first time in Torah, when Rachel tidrosh.
“Our foremother is dealing with existential pain and steps forward and tidrosh et Hashem, she does this derashing of God – so midrash is really committed, personal questioning.
“And so I am really passionate about building a home for the committed personal questioning of our treasure trove of texts and each other. That for me is a beit midrash.”
Rabbi Benji Stanley and daughter Jules[Missing Credit]
He aims to build on the success of the Queer Yeshiva and the egalitarian yeshivah project Azara, two recent initiatives which have emerged in the UK, both of whose summer programmes, he said, were fully booked.
“They have both shown in the last few years what demand there is for this. But what it has always lacked is one or two or three people who can really make some time and invest some energy to be teaching and leading throughout the year.”
And you do not need to be an advanced learner to take the plunge. “I believe that complete beginners can quickly fall in love with Talmud and start building their skills when introduced to it, using the right methods. I have seen this success at Azara and Hadar [the egalitarian yeshivah in New York where he spent some time during his rabbinic training with Leo Baeck College].
“With beginners, we give them the tools and support to be able to read the Talmud closely, finding joy in the process of figuring it out, and navigating the Talmud’s difficulties, open-endedness and ambiguities, with dictionaries and your chavrutah/study partners becoming your dear friends. All someone needs is the alef-bet and a willingness to immerse.”
He envisages beginning with sessions in people’s homes and various pop-up venues, with the possibility of virtual participation too, before graduating, he hopes, to a more permanent location in five to 10 years.
At a moment when many are finding it “a difficult time to be Jewish”, he believes that experiencing the texts that have formed the bedrock of Jewish civilisation within a community of fellow learners can help people to develop “a proud Judaism, a Judaism that gives them purpose”.
Many of us, he believes, “have internalised this sense that British Jewry punches beneath its weight or is a somehow a little embarrassed about being Jewish too much of the time. For a long time there’s been a sense we can improve our collective literacy in British Jewry.”
And in a religiously splintered community, he believes this new-style “pan-denominational” setting can help spark the kinds of conversation that are not possible within individual synagogues.
When he broached some new educational ideas at Westminster, initially he detected some concern that maybe congregants were not quite as passionate about learning as he was. But the reservations were soon allayed.
“We did a course of three consecutive Shabbats, where we would not only learn about the parashah after the service but also about how could you learn and how you could give your own dvar Torah,” he said. “We always had to bring more chairs to the table.”
He says he has no doubt that in a year and a half when the project launches and attracts the first cohort of students willing to commit themselves to learning for at least five hours a week, “we will have to bring more chairs to the tables.”
Image: Passionate about Torah: Rabbi Benji Stanley
