Knowledge and Identity: An Interview with Natan Kapustin

Knowledge and Identity: An Interview with Natan Kapustin

I would identify two very different kinds of Israel education that we do. The one that I will not speak about much is what I might call the reactive component. When things happen in or related to Israel, we need to address them. And we do that in a variety of ways. We have speakers come in, debriefing sessions with our students, Town Halls dedicated to open discussions about Israel, special tefillot, etc. This past year, post-October 7th, we were particularly intense in the reactive programming, and it is hard to know what this next year will bring. But none of this has affected what we have been doing in our core Israel education programming.

The Medium Is The Meaning

The Medium Is The Meaning

The premise of “making” meaning in Jewish education sounds somewhat heretical, code for the claim that learning Torah faces an intrinsic handicap: “The words of the Torah,” goes the argument, “may be weighty, but they’re not quite so…relevant. Learning, analyzing, and assessing exercises the brain, but ignores or stultifies the soul. And it’s a real shame, because learning Torah is so important. If only it were more meaningful…”

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