Hevruta Study

Beth El continues to offer two complementary learning models: periodic Bet Midrash gatherings and Chevruta (partner or small group) study. Either or both are open to all, without regard to Hebrew ability or background in Jewish learning.

There will be regularly scheduled Bet Midrash gatherings! Each Bet Midrash will focus on a particular theme with a designated text or texts and will feature:

The popular Chevruta study program designed by Rabbi Sager on designated themes continues at Beth El. New study partners/groups may begin at any time. Chevruta study involves pairs or small groups of students, committed to one another’s learning, who bring their different experiences, sensitivities and insights to a text. To date, the readings, always accompanied by guiding questions and suggestions, have included rabbinic texts, a Chassidic story, essays by modern theologians, and poetry. While Chevruta study is a traditional method of Jewish learning, it allows us and invites us to bring our contemporary questions and challenges to our partner/study group and to the text.

Previous Bet Midrash and Chevruta study themes included Teshuvah during the month of Elul, B'tselem Elohim (In the Image of G-d), End of Life and Final Healing and Passover themes (in conjunction with the Kallah study month), Tzedakah, and Pirke Avot between Pesach and Shavuot. Click here to see some of these materials.

If you already have a partner (or two or three), please let the office know. If you don’t have a partner and would like help in finding one, let us know that as well. 682-1238 or bethel.sec@verizon.net

For this, the third year, between Pesah and Shavuot, Beth El sponsors Hevruta/Pair study that raises money to feed the hungry. There is a tradition of marking the progress from Pesah (slavery) to Shavuot (Sinai) and of marking the daily grain offering between these two holidays by studying the 6 chapters of Pirke Avot/Chapters of the Fathers. Links to excerpts of each chapter are below. This year, we are adding some other study materials--one short piece each week.

The responsibilities of freedom require the best of our character, our discipline, our hearts and minds. Pirke Avot offers us short teachings of the ancient sages; teachings that instruct us and remind us of those characteristics that we bring to living lives of responsible freedom.

One who seeks to be a hasid/kind-dependable- upright person should try to learn the lessons of Avot.

Here is an opportunity to be a hasid/kind-dependable-upright person and to fulfill the mitzvah of Tzedakah while learning Pirke Avot:

Please register with Krisha (bethel.sec@verizon.net) and log your hours each week so that a contribution can be made to MAZON in honor of your study.

Enjoy, learn, and fulfill a Mitzvah!

The following is an e-mail message from Rabbi Sager to MAZON's Director of Donor Services explaining the donation made to MAZON for our 2007 Pesah to Shavuot Hevruta Study. This is followed by a response received from MAZON's vice president and general counsel.

Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:10:05 -0400
To: Bria Silbert (Mazon Director of Donor Services)
From: Rabbi Steven Sager
Subject: Mazon donation in honor of Pirke Avot study

Dear Bria,

I would like to tell you the story behind the $890 that I am sending to Mazon from Beth El Synagogue in Durham, NC. This year, between Pesah and Shavuot, members of our community learned Pirke Avot/The Chapters of the Fathers in hevruta/partnered study. Pirke Avot is the traditional text for marking the time between these two holidays. In addition to their historical significance as marking the road from slavery to responsibility, Pesah and Shavuot also mark the early and the late harvest times--the anticipation and celebration of bounty.

A donor in the community made it possible to link the theme of bounty to the enterprise of learning by pledging $10 per hour of hevruta learning time during the weeks between Pesah and Shavuot, with the stipulation that all funds should be sent to MAZON. More than 20 hevrutot, some of those pairs, including many inter-generational hevrutot and one international study pair who learned via phone and web-cam, logged a total of 89 hours.

It is a great pleasure and honor for us to make this contribution as a celebration of our learning and in honor of the hard work and lofty purpose of MAZON.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Steven G. Sager

From: Barbara Bergen
Date: 2007/06/07 Thu PM 03:01:31 CDT
To: Rabbi Steven Sager
Subject: That's wonderful

Dear Rabbi Sager,

My colleague, Bria Silbert, just passed along your email, and I wanted to take a moment to let you know how deeply moved I was to read about your linking of hevruta learning and MAZON. It's such a testament to your strength as a leader and to the cohesiveness of your congregational community that a donor would initiate this...and that nearly two dozen hevrutot would so enthusiastically embrace it!

Your support is particularly meaningful because, as you suggest, it posits the abundance of harvest against the desperate need experienced by so many hungry Americans, Israelis and others. What a lovely way to teach a "living" Judaism by connecting history, text study and tikkun olam.

I can't thank you enough for your ongoing generosity and support. MAZON is extremely lucky -- and very honored -- to call you a partner in our sacred work. Wishing you all the best for a wonderful summer,
Barbara H. Bergen

Here are study materials presented for chevruta discussion over the past few years. May the study of this holiday theme deepen your insights and inform your reflections for the renewal of the year.

Each Bet Midrash will feature some time for the study of a designated text, or texts from the catalogue of materials that have been available. That study time will be followed by a shiur/lesson drawing forth major ideas of our topic as they come out of the texts before us. This presentation will be sharpened and polished by the questions of those who have invested time and thought in the texts. These various modalities of study, hevruta learning and the shiur conspire to bring out the richness of ideas-in-community.

Bet Midrash is the ‘study house’ where everyday life meets tradition.

Bet Midrash is a place of engaging the past to the needs of the present.

Bet Midrash is part of our legacy.

Bet Midrash is part of our future…


Beth El’s Bet Midrash gatherings this fall:  
October 25cancelled
November 15 
December 6
Freedman Center Lounge, 10-11:30AM.  

This year's Bet Midrash theme is:
Ethics of Speech: “Death and life in the ‘hand’ of the tongue” 
(Proverbs 
18:21)

Click links below to download PDF versions of the Hevruta Study Pages If you'd like a hard copy of any these, please contact the office at 919-682-1238 or bethel.sec@verizon.net

LIFELONG LEARNING