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SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUEFROM JERUSALEM TO MASSACHUSETTSThis past September, after ten years of living, learning and teaching at Ohr Torah Stone, Naomi Wadler Berman and her husband Rabbi Todd Berman started a new chapter of their lives on a very different kind of campus: Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. With their four young daughters in tow, they are pioneering a brand new program aimed at bringing Ohr Torah Stone-style learning - with its emphasis on making Jewish knowledge accessible for all Jews -- to college students in the U.S.
"My training at Straus, along with my own U.S. campus experience, has given me the tools to relate to university students and help them synthesize their religious beliefs and practice with a secular university education," says Todd, who also holds an M.A. in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from Harvard University. "Naomi and I are both excited about communicating the ideas of Judaism in a way that the students can understand and appreciate." The Bermans, who served as instructors and house parents at Midreshet Lindenbaum, are teaching a total of 15 extra-curricular classes a week at Brandeis, on topics including Talmud, halacha, parshat hashavua and philosophy for beginning and more advanced students. They devote additional hours each week to arranging and supervising chavruta study, enhancing prayer services, meeting informally with students and organizing mini-courses and Shabbat programs. "We're working to attract students who are familiar with traditional sources as well as those who are new to Jewish texts," says Naomi. "Above all, we want to generate excitement on campus in Jewish learning and living." Rabbi Menachem Schraeder of the Straus Seminary was instrumental in initiating the project and remains in close contact with the Bermans. He reports, "Both Todd and Naomi spend long hours in the beit midrash, working closely with students, and their home is open to the student community as well. We're looking forward to seeing their influence extend beyond the student community in the near future."
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"The Hillel Foundation, along with the Orthodox Union and several other partner organizations in the U.S., have realized that while there are almost unlimited programs in Israel where college students can study Jewish texts on all levels, such programs are almost non-existent in American university settings," explains Naomi, who has taught Talmud and halacha at Ohr Torah Stone's Midreshet Lindenbaum for the past six years. Thus, the newly-formed Campus Learning Initiative is sending couples like Naomi, who studied for four years at Lindenbaum, and Todd, who spent seven years at Ohr Torah Stone's Yeshivat Hamivtar-Orot Lev and then studied for ordination at the Ohr Torah Stone's Joseph Straus Rabbinical Seminary, to work on college campuses in the combined capacities of teaching, counseling and encouraging Jewish observance.