Personal Pathways to Emunah for a Diverse Student Body
Linoy 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 and values. She is driven by lifelong curiosity. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Haifa.
A third-grade student once raised her hand during tefilah and asked, “Do we have to have emunah (faith) in God to be Jewish?” The room grew quiet. Her question reflected not only curiosity, but also the broader reality of our Modern Orthodox classrooms, where students bring diverse perspectives, experiences, and family practices into a shared educational environment.
Introduction
In our day school, we face a profound challenge: how to foster meaningful development of emunah within a student body characterized by theological and experiential diversity, while remaining firmly rooted in Orthodox practice. Students arrive with varying understandings of God, different levels of religious observance, and personal narratives that shape their relationship with Judaism in deeply individual ways. In such a context, emunah cannot be approached as a singular or fixed construct.
This raises essential pedagogical questions: How can we nurture emunah without prescribing a uniform spiritual model? How can we honor family and communal diversity while inviting authentic spiritual engagement? And what does it mean to educate for emunah in a Modern Orthodox setting that values both tradition and individuality?
Our approach does not create uniform belief expectations, but seeks to foster individualized pathways. By creating space for questioning, language exploration, and personal engagement with tefilah and Torah, we aim to encourage authentic, resilient, and meaningful spiritual development. One eighth grader expressed it as: “Our school doesn’t give you one specific way you need to think about God or spiritual life; it lets you have your own ideas.” This statement captures both the promise and complexity of faith education: sustaining openness to personal exploration while remaining anchored in shared commitments. We reframe emunah not as a fixed set of beliefs to be transmitted but as a dynamic and evolving relationship: with language, text, ritual, community, and self.
Rethinking Emunah in a Modern Orthodox Educational Setting
While traditional approaches to emunah education often assume a shared theological baseline, our students frequently differ in experience, language, and comfort with theological discourse. Within a single classroom, one student may speak confidently about God, while another expresses uncertainty or emotional distance. The question about emunah posed by the third-grade student with which this article opened reveals that even young students actively negotiate questions of identity, belief, and belonging.
Rather than responding to that question with a definitive answer, I chose to open an interpretive space:
Being Jewish involves emunah for some people, and for others it is expressed through practice, learning, and connection to community. In our classroom, we explore how each student can engage with emunah in a personal way, while remaining grounded in Torah, mitzvot, and Jewish tradition.
In this framing, faith education shifts from transmission to facilitation. The goal is not to lead students toward a single conclusion, but to create conditions for exploration, questioning, and meaning-making. Emunah becomes less about certainty and more about relationships—an ongoing process that includes curiosity, struggle, and growth.
“Al Pi Darko”: A Pedagogical Framework
The principle laid out in Proverbs (22:6), Hanokh lana’ar al pi darko (educate the child according to his way) offers a foundational lens for rethinking faith education. It calls on educators to recognize the individuality of each learner—not only cognitively, but also emotionally, culturally, and spiritually.
Applied to emunah education, this principle shifts practice in several ways:
- From uniformity to multiplicity
- From answers to questions
- From authority to partnership
- From performance to authenticity
Rather than asking what students should believe, the guiding question becomes: How can we help each student meaningfully engage with emunah? This orientation requires attentiveness, pedagogical flexibility, and comfort with complexity as an essential part of spiritual development.
Classroom Practices: Creating Pathways to Personal Emunah
Creating Space for Questioning in Tefilah
Questioning is not confined to structured discussion; it emerges naturally in daily school life, especially during tefilah. In these moments, students bring their inner worlds into the shared sacred space of prayer.
For example, students often wish to include the names of ill relatives in the refuah shelemah prayer. This practice becomes a shared classroom moment, as the names that are shared are heard by the entire class, who then participate together in praying for their healing. In this way, tefilah becomes a lived expression of care, vulnerability, and communal responsibility—transforming prayer from recitation into a relational experience.
In another instance, a student chose to remain silent during tefilah, later explaining that he preferred to “think the words inside my head rather than say them out loud.” This prompted a class discussion about the legitimacy of multiple forms of participation and the idea that engagement with prayer can take both internal and external forms.
A fourth-grade student shared that the part she likes most in the morning tefilah is the Amidah, which is recited quietly. Beyond finding calm and tranquility in the silence, she also feels a stronger sense of connection and emunah in God during this time. Her reflection further illustrates how students may experience tefilah through different internal pathways, with silence itself becoming a meaningful space for connection.
A fifth-grade student described his experience of tefilah in relational terms, explaining that when he prays, he feels that “God is in the room.” This statement reflects a concrete sense of divine presence and illustrates how students may experience emunah not as an abstract idea, but as an immediate and personal awareness within the shared space of prayer.
Together, these experiences illustrate that emunah is not merely conceptual but is lived through practice. They reflect the principle of al pi darko, in which each student’s spiritual expression is recognized and validated within a shared religious framework.
Hebrew as a Gateway to Spiritual Meaning
Hebrew language learning can open emotional and spiritual dimensions of Jewish life. Words such as rahamim (compassion), kavanah (intention), shalom (peace), and ruah (spiritedness) serve as entry points into values and inner states that extend beyond translation. These words become tools for meaning-making rather than vocabulary items alone, allowing students to connect language with identity and lived experience.
In one classroom, students experienced tefilah with ruah and reflected on how melody, tone, and intention shape their connection to prayer. Through this, emunah emerges not as abstract understanding, but as a lived and evolving experience.
In another instance, a student focused on the word seliha (forgiveness). Through drawing and reflection, he described it both as “saying sorry to a friend” and as “feeling lighter inside after I make a mistake.” He later noted that he began noticing moments in tefilah where asking forgiveness felt personally meaningful rather than abstract. This opened a broader discussion about how liturgical language bridges ethical awareness, emotional life, and spiritual reflection.
A fifth-grade student reflected that there is a part of tefilah she finds deeply meaningful, yet difficult to articulate. When asked to elaborate she responded, “I feel there is a meaningful part that is important to me during tefilah, but I don’t know how to explain it.” Her response suggests that students sometimes experience spiritual meaning intuitively even without being able to find the right words to express the feeling.
These experiences reflect the importance of accepting and validating differences between students and their emunah pathways, even when it comes to language. Meaning is not transmitted uniformly but constructed through individual encounters with sacred language.
Creative Engagement with Texts
Students are often invited to respond to siddur and Torah texts through drawing, painting, and visual interpretation. From the early grades, they select passages and express meaning in personal ways, becoming active participants in interpretation rather than passive recipients of tradition. Reflective prompts such as “What does tefilah mean to you?” and “If you could rewrite a tefilah, what would you change?” encourage deeper engagement with text as lived experience. One student shared: “Tefilah is my private place with God, a place where no one can disturb us.” This reflection highlights emunah as both personal connection and inner sanctuary.
These practices reflect al pi darko by allowing multiple forms of expression to coexist—visual, linguistic, emotional, and narrative—without reducing meaning to a single normative interpretation. The educator’s role becomes not interpreter of fixed meaning, but facilitator of individual encounter with sacred text. Emunah is cultivated as a personally meaningful and evolving relationship with tradition, language, and lived experience.
The Role of the Educator: Balancing Openness and Commitment
As educators are not primarily transmitters of emunah, but guides who facilitate exploration, the role demands attentiveness not only to cognitive development, but also to the emotional and spiritual dimensions of each learner’s experience. Teachers model thoughtful engagement rather than certainty, demonstrating how to remain present with questions while staying rooted in tradition. In doing so, they enact the approach in practice—recognizing that students will encounter and internalize emunah in diverse ways, each reflecting a legitimate and authentic pathway of development.
I should be clear in stating that we are not adopting theological relativism. We remain firmly grounded in Torah, mitzvot, and Orthodox practice, while allowing meaningful space for individual spiritual growth within that framework. That means that as we facilitate varied pathways of meaning-making, we hold firm with fidelity to tradition. This often poses a difficult challenge as we strive to balance structure with openness, continuity with individuality, and tradition with personal meaning. When held with care, this balance does not weaken emunah but strengthens it, enabling students to develop a more personal and enduring connection to Jewish life according to their own path.
Conclusion
Emunah education in our school is not about producing uniform certainty, but about cultivating meaningful relationships. When students are invited to question, reflect, and create meaning, emunah becomes a lived, evolving experience rather than a fixed requirement. Educators, in turn, provide students with language, tools, and confidence to continue their spiritual development beyond the classroom, empowering them to navigate their Jewish identity with authenticity, resilience, and depth. By embracing the idea that spiritual development is not one path but many, emunah becomes a dynamic and sustained relationship—one that continues to grow as students move through life, question, reflect, and engage with tradition in deeply personal ways.
Linoy 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 and values. She is driven by lifelong curiosity. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Haifa.
From The Editor: Fall 2026
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.
The Courage to Ask
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.
Creating the Conditions for Faith: Emunah as Encounter, Not Instruction
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 God We Trust: Teaching Bitahon
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.
What I Do Matters: Educating for Avodat Hashem
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.
From “What” to “So What”: Educating for Emunah Through Culture, Curriculum, Relationships, and Questions
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.
The Prophet as Rebel: Finding Faith in the Emotional-Psychological Classroom
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.
The Hidden Curriculum of Faith: How School Culture Shapes Religious Development
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.
Faith in the Future: What Jewish School Leadership Has Taught Me About Emunah
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.
Faith and Doubt: Lessons from a Modern Orthodox Scholars Program
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.
It Takes a Community
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.
Assessing Faith: The Gift We Owe Our Students
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.
Educating for Faith Through the Arts
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.
Doubt as a Catalyst for Faith
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.
Faith Without Dogma: A Developmental Approach to Jewish Spiritual Education
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:
Creating Space for Lifelong Conversations, Difficult Questions and Spiritual Growth is Jewish Education
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
And Both are True: Mimicry and Authenticity in Educating for Faith
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.
Developing Wholeheartedness
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.”
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