A Congregation of Learners

Read our journal of ideas, To Learn and To Teach | Read other writings by congregants

At Congregation Rodfei Zedek  we strive to be a Learning Congregation.  Learning forms the core of our identities as Jews.  This approach of building “congregations of learners” maintains that for Jews, learning is more than an intellectual exercise; it engages our emotions and influences our actions.

A congregation of learners is more than a collection of individuals that happens to learn.  Learning will, inevitably, spill over into every other aspect of congregational life, changing people’s approach to prayer, to ethics, and to social justice.  Learning brings people together, creating the sense of community so many are seeking.  When members of a congregation have a common understanding that Jewish learning is for everyone, and when they are provided with a range of engaging and stimulating opportunities for learning, that congregation will have become a congregation of learners. 

 

— Isa Aron, Becoming a Congregation of Learners (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000), p. 11.

While the study of Jewish texts is at the center of Jewish learning, as a Learning Congregation we also offer a wide range of opportunities that are not overtly educative but involve congregants with Jewish culture, practice, languages, and traditions.  

We understand that Jewish learning can take place in the kitchen as well as the classroom, the gymnasium as well as the sanctuary, at the art table as well as the study table.  We also believe that such learning must be tailored to the individual learner, meeting him or her, younger or older, at appropriate and desired levels.