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.
