Based on a session delivered by Rabbi Dr. Daniel Rose, Ph.D., Director of Education at Koren Publishers, at the LSJS Secondary School Jewish Studies Teachers Conference. Daniel is a graduate of our BA (Hons) degree in Jewish Education and now teaches on our Masters degree in Jewish Education.
Everyone in Israel has a fantasy job. For most people, it’s the one that pays them more or gives them more respect. For me, genuinely, my fantasy job is to be a classroom teacher. I miss the classroom every day. Whenever I get a chance to be back in it, I jump at it.
I grew up in the UK and started my career as a Jewish educator as a secondary school Jewish studies teacher at Immanuel College, Bushey. After my aliyah in 1999, I had the opportunity to do many interesting things in Jewish Education, including a period of shelichut. I started with teaching gap year students on various programs, and then I spent time in America as a shaliach teaching in a day school there. Since returning from America I have had the privilege of working for two organisations that are focused on Jewish day schools: Koren Publishers, and The Rabbi Sacks Legacy. This gives me the opportunity to travel the world visiting Jewish day schools, learning from them and providing professional development and training.
My journey with Koren began when a group of schools had come to Koren and said, “Look, we know it’s not going to be a silver bullet, but maybe if we had a more creative siddur, something that reflected where our students are, something different from the standard one we've all been using for generations — maybe that would help.” No one had attempted this in generations. We were still using the same siddurim, which were educationally unambitious, that we’d been using for the last 50 years. Through sheer will and good timing, I got involved in developing this series of educational siddurim as resources for day schools around the world — schools that were struggling with tefilla education.
Schools were generally then focusing heavily on skills and literacy when it came to tefilla — and for good reason. But maybe that’s part of the problem. I've never been into a primary school tefilla that wasn’t beautiful. Kids love it. They sing, they smile, they engage. It doesn’t matter where the school sits on the religious spectrum - those tefillot are amazing. But by the time students hit middle school - Key Stage 3 in the UK - it all falls apart. Singing is no longer fun. And certainly not cool! We lose them - because no one has invested in helping them find meaning in the tefillot, to connect to it as emotional and spiritual beings.
So we decided to try something different: what if students were at the centre of tefilla education? What if, instead of only focusing on literacy and skills, we created space for meaning-making?
Now I’m not saying that skills and tefilla literacy aren’t important. Of course they are. But we wanted to offer a complementary resource — something to help educators address both. At the time, I didn’t have the language for what we were doing, but looking back, I realise it was all about student-centred learning.
And that vision has carried over into the new Tanakh project I’m working on now, the Koren Aviv Tanakh series. I’m not here to sell you a book — although if you happen to meet my boss, please tell him I made a good pitch! What I really want to share is the educational vision behind the series.
There were two approaches to learning Tanakh that influenced the pedagogical foundation of this project. The first was my teacher and rebbe, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l, and his approach to learning parasha. In the introduction to Covenant & Conversation: The Book of Genesis, he writes:
“Torah is a commentary on life, and life is a commentary on Torah. Together they constitute a conversation, each shedding light on the other. Torah is a book not only to be read but to be lived.”
He saw the Torah as a conversation between the generations. Each generation engages with the text in its own way. And we, in our generation, must be part of that conversation. He wrote:
“The text of Torah is our covenant with God, our written constitution as a nation under His sovereignty. The interpretation of this text has been the subject of an ongoing conversation for as long as Jews have studied the divine word, a conversation that began at Sinai thirty-three centuries ago and has not ceased since. Every age has added its commentaries, and so must ours. Participating in that conversation is a major part of what it is to be a Jew. For we are the people who never stopped learning the Book of Life, our most precious gift from the God of life.”
And in recent years we have seen a similar approach in centers of Tanakh scholarship, encouraging students to engage directly with the text, rather than only through the prism of classical and modern commentaries. This approach has been pioneered by the scholars at Herzog College, as well as other centers of Tanakh scholarship across the world. In the introduction to the series Torah MiEtzion, Rabbi Ezra Bick writes:
“Tanakh is meant to be read and understood by the reader, without the absolute necessity of outside interlocutors. The keys to understanding Tanakh are found within Tanakh itself.”
This is tremendously empowering. What it means is that our students don’t only have to engage with the Torah through the prism of Rashi, Ramban, or Ibn Ezra. Of course, we should still teach those commentators — I can’t emphasize that enough — but we also need to empower students to bring their eyes, their experiences, and their context to the text. If we tell them the only way to access Torah is through the eyes of a medieval commentator, I think we risk disempowering them.
That’s why in the Aviv Tanakh, we don’t include the classic commentators. Instead, we include select modern voices — people who I believe model the type of engagement we want students to try: direct and reflective engagement in the text. We need to show our students how to ask the big questions: “What does this mean to me, as someone living in 2025? Where do I see myself in this ancient text that has formed the foundation of our nation’s identity and values?”
A legitimate reservation to this approach that educators may have is this: if we are focusing on meaning-making and student centred learning, won’t this be at the expense of a skills-based approach to textual learning? How can we employ this approach and still ensure students have the tools and skills to immerse themselves in the text and form their own opinions responsibly? If they don’t have the skills to really understand the text, are we not giving them too much autonomy?
The real problem here is that for the majority of Jewish day schools across the world, our scarcest and most valuable resource is time. We simply do not have enough time in our curriculum to teach everything we want to teach and achieve everything we want to achieve with our students. If we did, then the tension described here between skills and literacy in Jewish education, and empowerment and meaning making would disappear. The two approaches are not contradictory and work best when integrated. I dream of a world where students have strong Hebrew skills, textual tools, and the confidence to learn independently — and are given the opportunity to explore meaning and connection themselves, on their own terms. Each school must find their own balance between the two approaches, and I am fully cognisant how hard that is to do. Especially in UK Jewish schools, where time pressures on the curriculum are even greater.
Let’s consider what we actually mean by student-centred learning (SCL). This is not a new and radical pedagogy — many of you are already doing it. Some might say it is simply best practice in education. But let’s try and find a taxonomy to help us define and articulate what SCL is.
Differentiation is an example of a student-centred approach to education. Any pedagogical approach that takes a learner’s individuality into account can be viewed as SCL, and this is why differentiation is one way to define SCL, since it considers students’ diverse educational needs and learning styles.
An educational value and approach that has become much more popular in recent years is educating to a student’s inner world: This is when we focus on the student’s emotional, social, and spiritual well-being, rather than academic and intellectual abilities and development.
Finally, Student Choice and Student Voice is allowing students to be part of the decision making in how they will learn and be assessed. This allows them to use their talents and interests in the classroom and may include expanding the kinds of learning activities and assessments utilized. This is often known as Project Based Learning (PBL), and SCL is sometimes presented as synonymous with PBL, but it does not have to be.
There are clear advantages to taking a SCL approach to Tanakh learning. These include:
· Empowerment: students become empowered as they take responsibility for their learning
· Student Sense of Self: Students develop a strong sense of self as they hone critical thinking skills and learn how to communicate and collaborate effectively.
· Flourishing Students: A more holistic approach to the student leads to intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual development
There are some obvious risks and challenges to this approach, specifically when it comes to Tanakh instruction. When we empower students to say what the text means to them, we have to prepare ourselves to receive some uncomfortable answers. We no longer have total control of the content of our classrooms, and for some this is significantly out of their comfort zone.
I specifically foresee the following challenges with this approach:
• Decentralization of the text: Does SCL Tanakh learning leave less room for curriculum and skills acquisition?
• A radical break from tradition: Is this a radical break from traditional approaches to Jewish studies, leaving no room for inherited wisdom?
• Heretical ideas: Does empowering student voice and meaning-making risk losing control of the message, and run the risk of unacceptable ideas in the classroom?
• Gen Z and individualism: Does this approach address the new generation or perpetuate the obsession with individualism and self-expression?
Making space for our students in our classrooms, and for them to find themselves in the text is not without risks, but I firmly believe the benefit far outweigh the risks. And that is why this pedagogy forms the foundation and guiding light behind the approach to learning and teaching Tanakh found in The Koren Aviv Tanakh. Again, that is not to say that this approach should replace the traditional in-depth study of Tanakh with classical commentaries. There is without doubt a deep value to approaching the text of the Tanakh through the eyes of the classical and modern commentators, who themselves reflect ancient traditions and readings. However, I believe this approach complements that one and, I would argue, should precede it. The brave educator will encourage his or her students to find their own meaning in the text before they then explore the rich library of Jewish commentaries available to navigate our understanding of Tanakh.
Let’s now briefly focus on the educational elements of the Koren Aviv Tanakh, as an example of SCL of Tanakh.
· Opening reflection questions can be found on the opening page of each episode. These are two categories of reflection and textual analysis questions which encourage the student to engage directly with the text on their own terms and become a Tanakh commentator in their own right. Unlocking the Text is a list of questions that identify the gaps in the text, which close readers of the Tankah would wish to address and explore, and Finding Yourself in the Text encourages students to relate to the text in a personal way, using their own lived experience as a frame of reference.
· Bibliodrama is a creative educational tool that enables students to deepen their connection to the characters in the text by “stepping into their shoes.” It is a form of role-playing in which students are asked to take on the role of the characters in biblical texts. Bibliodrama asks students to imagine what was going on in the minds and hearts of the personalities from the narrative, and in so doing, the students are creating their own midrash
· The Art of Midrash uses art as a modern form of Midrash. Just as our classical midrashim address the gaps in the text begging to be addressed, so have artists throughout the ages when they create a visual interpretation of the Tanakh text through their art. Asking our students to analyze the midrashic process the artists have embarked on, and to evaluate if and how it enlightens our own connection to and understanding of the text, can be a powerful way for students to engage in the text.
· Integrating Ĥokhma brings texts and resources from the world of science to enlighten and deepen our understanding of the text. More often than not, this scientific wisdom was not available to the medieval and even many of the modern commentators, and this is an opportunity to empower students to engage with the text in a way that previous commentators could not.
· Taking a Literary Approach presents a wide array of Tanakh scholars who analyse the text from a literary perspective. Literary analysis tools found in this section include structural analysis, terminology analysis, such as the discovery of a “leading term,” textual comparison and intertextuality, plot analysis, and character analysis. The focus of these excerpts is on the story, the entire narrative, and in some cases, the whole Tanakh, rather than the traditional verse-by-verse approach taken by many of the classic commentaries.
The book is not designed as a curriculum, where all the content must be taught and studied. It is an array of resources to help the teacher encourage her students to engage directly in a personal way to the text of the Tanakh.
My hope is that we can help students find their voice in the conversation. Not instead of Rashi — but alongside. Because if students don’t see themselves in the Torah, they won’t feel it belongs to them. And if they don’t feel it belongs to them, why would they ever choose to keep learning it or living by its values?
If you’re an ambitious Jewish Education professional, consider boosting your career with our degrees in Jewish Education. Find out more at lsjs.ac.uk/ba and lsjs.ac.uk/ma.
