For David Waksberg, it’s the $64,000 question: What does meaningful, relevant and effective Jewish learning look like in the 21st century?
It’s a logical query for the Bureau of Jewish Education’s executive director. He may get a good answer at this year’s Feast of Jewish Learning, the annual South Peninsula community event that brings together top educators and hundreds of Jews eager for a night of study.
This year, it takes place the evening of Jan. 29 in a new location, the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto.
With scores of co-sponsors including local synagogues, day schools and Jewish agencies, the event draws a stellar cast of rabbis, scholars, teachers and community leaders to teach or lead dozens of workshops.
With the overall theme of “Looking Forward,” at this year’s feast topics will include everything from changes in the major Jewish denominations to a look at recent Jewish cinema. And there’s plenty of Torah study, too.
All are welcome, including the region’s sizeable Russian- and Hebrew-speaking communities. Some classes will be taught in those languages.
Waksberg will teach a class on the future of Jewish education, something he admits keeps him up at night.
He sees the present as “the best of times and worst of times,” because of both a flowering of innovation and creativity in contemporary Jewish life, contrasted with the ongoing challenges of assimilation.
“What are the design principles of Jewish education in the era of Facebook and Twitter?” he asks. “Everyone is a Jew by choice today. This generation has so much to choose from. They are looking to see what is of value here that is authentic and can speak to their experience as a human being.”
Donnovan Yisrael, manager of Relationship and Sexual Health Programs at Stanford University’s Vaden Health Center, shares Waksberg’s concerns. He will co-lead with Melissa Kelley a workshop titled “Navigating the Jewish Generation Gap.” His goal is to make Jewish tradition more appealing to young people.
He thinks the correct path will tap into their hunger for spirituality.
“The intellect is very powerful, but it cannot and will not solve some of life’s most difficult and inevitable problems,” he says. “How can we make [Jewish tradition] powerfully relevant and interesting, not just to youth but to the secular adults?”
Longtime Bay Area Jewish educator Nechama Tamler will co-teach with Stanford professor Charlotte Fonrobert a class guaranteed to draw attention: “Forbidden Sex as a Roadmap to Bringing the Messiah.”
For evidence, Tamler turned to the Bible.
In her workshop, she proposes “that the messianic, redemptive moment, according to Jewish classical literature, was a procreative act, initiated typically by a woman who has a strong perspective and commitment to the future. She risks her reputation, the prevailing moral code, and engages in prohibited sexual relations.”
Among those transgressors are Genesis’ Lot’s daughters, who sleep with their father after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“They think the world has come to an end,” Tamler says. “They contrive a way to have sex with their father. Nobody can say that’s OK. It’s absolutely prohibited, but from this come the Ammonite and Moabite people.”
Waksberg hopes this year’s Feast of Jewish Learning will draw more than 500 attendees. He thinks the appeal of the event is simple: Jews never seem to tire of study.
But he notes that the nature of that study has changed. Paraphrasing the early 20th century Jewish education pioneer, Franz Rosenzweig, Waksberg says, “Jewish learning used to start with Torah and work it into our lives. Now we start with our lives and work our way back to Torah. It’s a prescription for how Jewish learning works in modernity.”
The Bureau of Jewish Education’s Feast of Jewish Learning takes place 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Jan. 29 at the Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. Admission is free. Information: (415) 751-6983 or www.bjesf.org.