Enter Hebrew College's Bet Midrash in the Gann Library on any given weekday, and you're bound to hear the buzz of students working in
hevruta—study pairs—dissecting Jewish texts. But Hebrew College students aren't the only ones engaged in this classical form of Jewish learning.
Across the tables in the Bet Midrash and up the hill at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS), seminarians are joining with Hebrew College rabbinical students to explore texts, values and beliefs rooted in both Jewish and Christian traditions.
In the recent ANTS/HC course "Moses and Jesus: Models of Religious Leadership," Greg Mobley, ANTS Professor of Hebrew Bible, and Rabbi Or Rose, Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School, required students to discuss assigned texts in hevruta sessions before each class. Rabbi Van Lanckton Rabb'09, who converted to Judaism in 1967, found the experience rich with insights that bridge religious traditions
"My partners from ANTS recently discussed with me a passage from the Gospel of Luke stating that Jesus' parents brought him as an infant into the Jerusalem temple to ‘present him to the Lord,'" he recalls. "I pointed out that the temple in Jerusalem was the site where animals were slaughtered as sacrificial offerings. It then dawned on us that this passage could be viewed as presaging the crucifixion."
Leslie Becknell Marx, a 2009 graduate of ANTS and Unitarian Universalist who has long participated in interfaith services and dialogue circles, views such exchanges as powerful learning opportunities.
"When you enter into this conversation, your default position is often a shallow understanding of the other's tradition," Marx observes. "The practice of hevruta forces you to deepen your understanding of the other's tradition and your ability to explain your own."
With that goal in mind, ANTS and HC students have placed hevruta-style text study and conversation at the core of joint initiatives over the past five years. Supported by generous grants from the Righteous Persons and Luce Foundations, these include semester-length courses (taught jointly by HC and ANTS faculty), interfaith student leader fellowships, peer study groups, and informal learning and ritual observance opportunities. Participants engage in deep conversations about their religious journeys and other topics of common interest.
These programs have created a safe space for hevruta partners of different faiths not only to find common ground, but also to express skepticism about controversial issues, such as the historical veracity of the parting of the Red Sea or the divinity of Jesus. "Hevruta is not just about discussing texts, but about building trust across religious divides," says Marx.
Lanckton agrees. "There's a passage in Exodus in which God tells Moses to place on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant inside the Tabernacle the likenesses of two cherubim—two human-faced angels—facing each other across the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments," he says.
"God tells Moses, ‘There I will meet with you.' I believe that is a place where God is manifest, where two humans face each other and engage in deep and honest communication. That's hevruta."
—Mark Dwortzan
Mark Dwortzan is a freelance writer living in Newton, Mass.