It's not about the information.

Judaism is not about acquiring content, conveying content, or knowing more and more. 

It’s is not about creating human encyclopedias.

It’s not about information – it’s about transformation.

It’s about becoming. It’s about using the information to evoke a better kinder, holier me. It’s about removing the obstacles that hinder my soul from emerging.

What is spiritual education? Education which invites, allows, and enables me to walk the path of living in the Image of God.

Education for transformation is wholly different than education for information.

We know how to convey information. Learn the material; present it in a clear and interesting fashion, a few jokes and personal charisma helps. We know how to do this. We’ve been experiencing it in our schools all of our lives.

But how do we educate for transformation? How do we educate to allow a soul to emerge? How do we evoke and foster a soul’s path? How do we elicit a response, rather than thrust data?

Two elements are necessary: Space and Safety.

Space – for personal expression. Most rabbis and teachers fill up all of the space.

Can we take a step back; contract ourselves, and give space to the other to take in the information in his or her own unique way? Learning something, memorizing information, knowing the theory or what’s in the book - does not make it mine. It just enables me to retell someone else’s ideas. Acquiring pages of Talmud, knowing the commentators - does not make it mine. It just enables me to declaim the wisdom of others. Is our goal to create clones? How do I make it mine?

Space. Like saplings – people need space to grow. I need space and time to let the knowledge move into my heart, to transpose it into my own unique world experience. I need the opportunity to personally and openly express how I absorb the knowledge I have obtained.

I need space for my personal expression of the knowledge – through reflecting on it, through writing about it, through using it to create something new and uniquely mine. Then the knowledge circulates through me and becomes something new and distinctively mine. Then the information is not present solely in my mind, but also has been woven into my heart and my life experience. Only if I create something with this knowledge does it begin to merge into my soul.

It’s not about the information, it’s about what the information does to me, for me, and then ultimately for all others.

Safety. I need safe space to personally engage. How will I be transformed by this knowledge? There is nothing as daunting as personal change and growth. I am who I am, isn’t that enough? No, it is not enough. I can be infinitely more than I presently am.

My soul is vastly beyond what I am now. I am not nearly what I will and can become. But this process is intimidating, overwhelming. We are more fragile than we would like to admit.

And so I need not just space, but a safe space. No one attacking, criticizing or judging me. Like the young sapling, I need to be nourished. I need love and support from my immediate environment. Like the young sapling, sometimes I need to be held up. It’s not easy to grow into my next stage.

Information – not hard to learn, not hard to convey.

Transformation – Letting the knowledge impact my being. Evoking my soul, and inviting me to become who I can be. A new paradigm. A paradigm that needs space and safety.