The hundreds of people who signed up last summer and fall for Yesod – a new and innovative Judaism course presented by the Streicker Center, the powerhouse Jewish and literary cultural center based at the renowned Temple Emanu-El in New York City – got much more than the promised classes with stellar teachers such as comedian Alex Edelman and cookbook author Joan Nathan.
The students have had a chance to study Jewish history with master teachers just as a new and frightening chapter in Jewish history is playing out in real time.
Dr. Gady Levy, the innovative executive director of the Streicker Center, who has often filled the 2,500-seat auditorium with such luminaries as former president Barack Obama and the entire cast of Shtisel, conceived of Yesod years ago as an opportunity for people considering conversion, making up for a missed bar or bat mitzvah, or thirsting for Jewish knowledge to study together with some of the greatest current Jewish thinkers and scholars.
Students were able to choose to hear from teachers including Rabbi David Wolpe, former rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, Michael Berenbaum, the founding director of the Holocaust Museum, and Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
And, with the first class held just a few days after October 7, Yesod has become a guided bird’s-eye view of the war unleashed by Hamas in the context of Jewish history.
A bird's-eye view of the Israel-Hamas War's impact on Jewish history
“October 7 created a seismic shift that we saw not only in Yesod, but also in our other programs [at the Streicker Center], including our outreach to young professionals,” says Levy.
“Jews needed and sought community. This period has clearly underscored something that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks taught: When we face challenges and danger, we need to respond by becoming more Jewish,” says Levy. “Yesod provided the opportunity to do just that (be more Jewish).”
Levy’s goal in creating the program is to “bring adult learners together on a journey through the vastness of Jewish history, tradition, and practice in ways that felt really engaging, manageable, and relevant to their lives.” The war has amped up Yesod’s relevance.
Levy says the key was to enlist educators at the top of their fields, a trait they all have in common, “despite widely differing teaching styles, beliefs, affiliations, and interpretations.”
Other teachers for this past year have included Temple Emanu-El’s rabbi, Joshua Davidson, Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Kehilath Jeshurun, an Orthodox synagogue, and Rabbi Shai Held, president of the Hadar Institute, which promotes egalitarian communities of learning and lived Judaism.
The curriculum was developed by Wolpe, now a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, author Abigail Pogrebin, and Davidson.
Wolpe says October 7 hasn’t changed the curriculum, other than by emphasis, “because you still want people to have the basics of what it means to be a Jew in the modern world, and that isn’t changed by what’s going on in Israel.”
But Wolpe says the war is on everyone’s mind and the curriculum has breadth for that.
“When you talk, for example, about Abraham going towards the land, and people hear how deeply rooted the Jewish connection is to that land, it helps to place the current crisis in a deeper historical and spiritual context,” says Wolpe.
Once enrollment closed last fall, new students could not sign up, but Levy added some of Yesod’s teachers, including Tal Becker, adviser to the Foreign Ministry, who represents Israel at the International Court of Justice, to speak at the Streicker Center.
The first year focused on history and culture, while next year will concentrate on the Jewish holidays as they’re celebrated among different kinds of local communities and institutions in New York City.
Pogrebin (author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew), who also helped recruit faculty for Yesod, says no teachers even attempted to skirt the war in their presentations, “because we are all carrying a different kind of weight now.” The material isn’t going to change, says Pogrebin, but the instructors responded to reality, which allows you to take something that is ancient “and make it wholly urgent.”
That was certainly the case for the class taught by Elana Stein Hain, just 10 days after October 7, titled “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Kingdoms.” Stein Hain, the Rosh Beit Midrash and a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, marveled at the significance of a class planned months ago in the days following the start of the war. “It was very important to me to be teaching then that after the fall of the kingdoms, the same prophets who prophesized doom also spoke about the comfort that comes after the doom.”
Stein Hain says she also thought it was important in that moment to remember that the Torah reminds us that “we’ve been through hard times and, thank God, we’ve gotten through them, and we’re going to get through them again.”
VIRTUALLY NONE of the hundreds of people who signed up for Yesod has withdrawn, and Davidson says he is not surprised.
“I have never, in my more than 25 years in the rabbinate, discerned the sort of anguish that the Jewish community is feeling now,” he says. “And I suppose this moment could scare some people away, but my experience is quite the reverse. It is causing people to lean in.”
Davidson adds that a program like Yesod, because of its curriculum, attracts people who are already committed to Judaism and want to learn more, and those who are on the threshold of Jewish life and want to explore whether the community is the right moral anchor for them.
Several Yesod instructors said they found it impossible, particularly in the early days of the war, to hide their own shock and concern, but that meant students and teachers were often working through the same emotions together. And many among the faculty said student questions prompted them to think more and harder about the issues all Jews are facing now.
Asked about the conversion component of Yesod, which has about a dozen students, Berenbaum says the events of October 7 and its aftermath make it necessary to emphasize to people who want to join the Jewish people “that you are now becoming 3,000 years old. You are gaining joy and majesty and holiness, along with responsibility and anguish. So you are going through all the dimensions of human life, and you are doing it of your own free choice.
“Welcome,” says Berenbaum, “but please understand this isn’t easy.”
Wolpe says the lessons of Yesod equally hold true for people who are already members of the Jewish community.
“There is no time like a time of crisis,” says Wolpe, “when it is more important to remind yourself what it means to be a Jew. Not just what it means to know the politics or to monitor the media, but to really understand why this is what we are fighting for and why our tradition matters so much, and how much Judaism has to contribute to the world and how beautiful and rich and deep it is.” ■