By Steve Lipman
A Brooklyn-born resident of Denver for more than four decades, Steven Shecter says he had a typical US Jewish education growing up — he had briefly attended Hebrew School, but “didn’t learn very much.”
Steven Shecter
Retired from a career in financial services, he resumed his Jewish education recently.
With time on his hands during the pandemic, he enrolled in an online one-on-one tutorial sponsored by the Partners in Torah organization.
Partners in Torah arranges weekly chavruta sessions across North America between teachers (“mentors” is the preferred PiT nomenclature) who have advanced Jewish educational background, and students, like Shecter, who come from less-intensive backgrounds.
“I like to learn,” Shecter says.
He had taken part in a PiT program several years ago, and resumed his association when contacted by a man in New Jersey with an intensive Jewish background who had received Shecter’s name from the organization.
They started studying various aspects of traditional Judaism on the phone for a half-hour each week.
Shecter is not alone.
In a counterintuitive trend, while many people affected by the restrictions of COVID-19 are concentrating on their physical and fiscal health, Partners in Torah, with a spiritual orientation, has experienced “a boon,” says Rabbi Eli Gewirtz, the organization’s founding director.
The number of people affiliated with PiT activities has “more than doubled” during the past year, from some 4,400 people taking part in one-on-one study sessions, to about 9,000 (that number includes both “mentors,” who largely have strong Jewish educational backgrounds, and students who usually come from weaker backgrounds).
The increase has led to a doubling in the organization’s annual budget, from $1.3 million to $2.6 million; a step-up in fundraising activities, with a greater emphasis on philanthropic foundations; and the addition of four staff members.
A PiT employee brought the increase in people registering for PiT educational activities to Rabbi Gewirtz’s attention last summer, during the height of the pandemic.
“What’s happening?” she asked the rabbi — while many Jewish, as well as non-Jewish organizations around the country, were experiencing steep declines in their number of participants, forcing the closure of many groups, PiT was flourishing.
Which was a surprise to Rabbi Gewirtz.
At that time, he says, he had feared that PiT, which had begun under the aegis of Torah Umesorah 28 years ago and became independent four years ago, “would have to fold.”
Instead, it expanded.
With time on their hands and problems on their minds, “people were prioritizing things in their lives,” the rabbi says.
“They were looking for more meaning. There is a latent thirst for what Jewish tradition offers.
“We’re giving people a taste [of intensive Jewish learning] of what they had never studied before.”
Thus, many turned to Judaism.
One example: Audrey Jacobs, a financial advisor and former venture capitalist who grew up in Dallas and now lives in San Diego. She went through “a very dark time” during the early period of the pandemic, she says.
One day, she found an application form on Facebook for Partners in Torah. “I filled it out.”
Jacobs, who was raised “very, very Reform,” says she “didn’t have any foundation” in fundamental Jewish beliefs.
PiT matched her up with a partner in Florida; they have studied Pirkei Avot, the section of Mishnah that outlines many early rabbis’ ethical principles.
The learning has improved her life, says Jacobs, who calls herself “very traditional . . . but not observant.”
“I’ve gained faith, hope, meaning” from her study of Pirkei Avot, Jacobs says. “It’s deepened my faith in G-d. I’ve taken on a lot more mitzvahs.”
“I’ve cancelled almost everything in my life but this,” she wrote of her PiT chavruta in an essay, “Floating on Uncertainty,” in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.
While some people did drop out from Partners in Torah activities, they were far outnumbered by those who joined during the pandemic — either because of or despite the physical limitations imposed by the pandemic, Rabbi Gewirtz says.
For many, the social connections, the sense of community, the friendships formed by strangers from varying Jewish backgrounds who found a commonality during their study sessions, outweighed the learning itself, he says.
In other words, the partnership of PiT was the vital factor, rather than the Torah.
“People are joining because of community — they want to feel that they belong to the Jewish community,” Rabbi Gewirtz says.
Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program, points to other Jewish organizations — including the Manhattan Jewish Experience and the educational ventures of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, both in New York City, and NJOP’s online Hebrew instruction classes — that have countered the negative aspects of the pandemic.
The success stories owe their recent increases to Zoom, the online portal on which much of the US public has conducted its affairs in the last year.
The successful organization’s spiritual emphasis offers “a diversion” to standard business matters “that is very attractive,” Rabbi Buchwald says.
Partners in Torah, which has begun offering several short-term learning activities that center around specific themes, including upcoming holiday of Shavuot, will continue to offer such educational programs after COVID-19 becomes a distant memory, Rabbi Gewirtz says.
Denver’s Steven Shecter took a temporary hiatus from his PiT chavruta sessions, but says he hopes to resume them in time for Shavuot.
“I would love to,” he says.
