For part of the time that I was studying for my semikha I had a roommate whom I admired for his faith. It was pure, simple, genuine, rock solid. My friend never seemed to question, to waver. I sometimes challenged him, but he was unfazed. I often wished that some of that would rub off on me. Nope. He remained steadfast; I remained struggling.

An eleventh grader this year wrote about her faith in the wake of October 7th:

In the weeks following…, I found it challenging to believe in a G-d that could allow such horrors to be done to humans, especially His chosen people…. I found myself wondering, “How could a merciful G-d put us in this world knowing the immense suffering that would ensue?” He is supposed to be looking out for us and protecting us…Eventually, my doubts started spreading into other areas of my life. Brachot lost their meaning, teffilot seemed to have lost their power, and motivation for some mitzvot completely disappeared. My day-to-day life lost its “light” without the meaning or motivation to guide me through my days.

Every summer my paternal grandmother, a devout Orthodox Jew from the Bronx, took me on holiday to the beaches of Far Rockaway. On Shabbat morning we would stroll just two blocks from our breezy apartment to the synagogue steps—though it was less a walk than a journey to another place and time. Modeled after the grand edifices of Europe, the sanctuary was physically stunning: soaring, cathedral-like ceilings, colorful stained-glass windows, the women’s balcony above, the men’s section below. The service was scheduled to begin at nine, but on this Shabbat we arrived a full hour early. Sitting together in the silence, alone in the large empty hall, I asked her why we had come so soon.

In the immediate wake of October 7, 2023, the instinct of many Jewish educators worldwide was clear: we needed to teach hope. Many of us clung to the timeless words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “It is not too much to say that Jews kept hope alive, and hope kept the Jewish people alive.” Hope was our life-support system and one of the messages of every piece of Torah I subsequently taught.

When Jewish educators in the modern West discuss “educating for faith,” we may unconsciously import a framework that does not quite fit our tradition. The dominant model in the broader cultural conversation, shaped largely by Protestantism, understands religious faith primarily as a personal relationship with the Divine: belief in God’s existence and love, and the cultivation of trust in and intimacy with a personal God. This is a coherent and meaningful vision, and in fact, we have much to learn from our Protestant colleagues. But this is not the most distinctively Jewish one.

We begin with a firm belief that each student has a neshamah—a soul, a divine spark—and with it an inherent capacity for emunah, or faith. Our task is not to try to create something new for them. It is to awaken and strengthen that inheritance, to reveal what is theirs already and to help students make it personally their own.

For us, the goal of Jewish education is to have Jewish identity expressed in thought and action. That identity is grounded in an awareness of God (Hashem), a personal relationship with God, and responsibility toward other people. This is not one objective among many; it is the mission of our school.

I stepped into the classroom mid-year as both the homeroom and Tanakh teacher for a group of six 9th graders at an Israeli emotional-psychological school. These were students for whom the traditional educational system had often been a site of failure rather than growth. Most struggled with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) or had other neurodivergent challenges. Most were “talkers”—highly intelligent, deeply critical of systems, and, with one exception, entirely non-religious.

A student walks out of twelve years of intensive Judaic studies. She has learned Humash with Rashi, sat through years of Talmud, and taken courses in Jewish thought. But ask her, some years later, what shaped her relationship with Torah and with God, and the answer does not usually start with a class. Instead, it starts with the memory of a teacher who treated her with care during a hard stretch, an administrator whose handling of a particularly charged moment stood out, or the way that faculty members handled disagreements and differences of opinion amongst themselves and with students.

It is often said that Judaism is a religion of deed, not creed. In Jewish day schools, that distinction is often taken one step further. Schools teach texts, practices, language, and history, but often hesitate to name faith as an educational goal. In pluralistic settings in particular, educators are wary of imposing theology or defining belief.

Three years ago, I launched what is now the Sloan Scholars Program, an enrichment program rooted in our Modern Orthodox mission to integrate rigorous Torah study with the best of worldly knowledge. Through seminars, readings, guest speakers, cultural outings, and independent research, students explore enduring questions at the intersection of Torah and modernity. Over time, however, I noticed that many of the questions students most wanted to investigate were not merely intellectual; they were existential. Students asked why Jewish traditions developed as they did, how halakha should respond to contemporary challenges, and, perhaps most fundamentally, how a Modern Orthodox Jew should live in a complex modern world.

In my role as board president, and as a parent of both graduates and current students, I frequently receive feedback from parents, staff, and administrators about the state of the school. Some of the most impassioned conversations revolve around the question of how schools can help students deepen their faith. Few, however, are able to articulate precisely what this means. For some, faith grounds and manifests itself in resilience. For others, it is a spiritual attachment expressed through greater religious observance, prayer, or ritual practice. Faced with this ambiguity, schools often attempt a little of everything. They expand informal programming, encourage visible religious behavior, and offer courses in Jewish philosophy. Yet these well-intentioned efforts are often premised on the assumption that faith is a discrete educational outcome.

Faith is one example of a “non-testable” priority that Jewish day schools have. In a recent article for 18Forty, Hillel Rapp identifies inspiration as one of the four pillars of Jewish high school. If educating for inspiration, or faith, is as important as academic learning, it is actually essential for schools to find some way to assess and report on the progress, at the time that it’s happening. Otherwise, we run the risk of telling students that this is a core part of our purpose, while showing them that we actually only care about math and science. To be sure, I am not suggesting that we give students a grade on faith. Instead, we need to get back to the core of the purpose of assessment and then use that information to set goals for future growth.

When I learned to paint, my father told me to pay attention to light and shadows, there is something spiritual, otherworldly, but also recognizable, in captured light. Like in Rembrandt. Maybe he had read once that Rav Kook suggested that Rembrandt was blessed with a vision of the holy light secreted away at creation.

I never asked him, as he died when I was 14 and most of my questions came later. I wanted to believe in a rational world, yet met a world that didn’t make sense but allowed us to trust in ourselves and our own rationality. Where did God and religion fit in there? At moments in my young adulthood when faith seemed far, I would sometimes find glimmers of it in visual aesthetic experiences; the light of the Shabbat candles and the moments when the sun slips away.

Jewish day schools today educate students in a cultural environment shaped by distraction, rapid information flow, and exposure to competing value systems. For many students, religious language and practice can feel inherited rather than chosen, and belief can appear fragile or performative. In this context, the central challenge for Jewish education is not simply how to transmit faith, but how to cultivate a form of faith that is resilient, reflective, and capable of growth.

I submit that faith in K-12 Jewish education does not develop primarily through doctrinal instruction or rote assent. Instead, it emerges through lived experience, responsibility, and structured encounters with doubt. Rather than treating doubt as a threat, Jewish education can frame it as a catalyst for deeper commitment.

Morah Elana gathers her students on the carpet in the morning. Each student sits in their place, though a few still squirm restlessly. But the routine begins, as the teacher and students recite together with the hand motions:

AllIssuesJournalCreditsLinoy Even-Kesef is a Judaic Studies and Hebrew educator at Oakland Hebrew Day School (California). She is also engaged in research and writing on Jewish education, Hebrew language instruction, spirituality, and values-based learning. Dr. Even-Kesef is committed to creating meaningful educational experiences that foster personal growth and a deep connection to Jewish texts...

Introduction Jewish educators need to make a radical shift in how we teach both children and adults about the Divine. Educators must be empowered to discuss God openly and often, ensuring that students’ spiritual identities evolve alongside their intellectual development. I learned about this from speaking to my congregants—highly intelligent professors and professionals—yet most had not revisited their concepts of the Divine since their Benai Mitzvah at age 13. This raised critical pedagogical and spiritual questions for me. How do individuals become spiritually stuck? How do we facilitate spiritual growth? How do people become spiritually stagnant? How do we as Jewish educators prevent our current Benai Mitzvah from becoming not only stuck in their 13-year-old theology, but also

Every teacher wants to make a difference in their students’ lives, and educating for faith involves relationship building. Jewish faith is founded on an individual’s relationship with God, the Land of Israel, Torah, and the Jewish People. Teachers who want to help students build their faith need to build relationships with their students which support, but do not supplant, the students’ relationships with the foundations of Jewish faith. Similar to the approach used to guide skill development in academic, behavioral, and social-emotional learning, where modeling, direct instruction, or coaching techniques may be effective, the teacher needs to step aside at the appropriate juncture to encourage independence. Emulation of role models can be a useful first stage, but mimicry that does not advance beyond imitation may impede authentic religious growth and development.

In the introduction to his 11th century book Duties of the Heart, R. Bahya Ibn Pakuda poses a question that Jewish educators continue to struggle with today. Bahya asks why he cannot find any source in rabbinic texts that describes the inner life of the Jew. He knows there are mitzvot to learn and perform, he knows that there are intellectual concepts to attain and reason with but where are, what he calls, “The Duties of the Heart?” The book that he writes, one of the most popular Jewish books for 1000 years, starts to enumerate these Duties and weighs them alongside the mitzvot and de’ot, what he identifies as the “Duties of the Limbs.”