When the Teacher Is the Text
Joshua Krug is a scholar of Jewish Studies who has served as an educator in high school, university, and rabbinical school settings.
ESTHER WERDIGER
My ninth grade Judaics teacher taught Torah with his whole body. By the end of class, sweat would bead on his forehead, and the fabric beneath the armpits of his button-down dress shirt was reliably drenched. Even when some of us were rowdy, he never raised his voice and always spoke to us, including the rebels, with kavana (intention). He occasionally digressed into discussing recent baseball games, which mattered to me because I woke up early every day to read the Los Angeles Times sports section. I was impressed not only that a teacher cared about baseball, but also that he shared that care with us.
Decades later, I can still recall intricate details of the halakhot of ona’at devarim, verbal wronging, that I studied with him in tractate Bava Metzia. What stays with me most, however, is something harder to quantify: the unmistakable sense that Torah mattered enough to make my teacher tremble before us. His visible effort, taken as a whole, signaled that teaching was neither performative nor transactional. He was existentially invested, and, in that sense, it cost him something.
Such memories endure because over the course of that year, as I studied Talmud, I also came to know my teacher as a person. At the time, I would not have admitted this publicly, but I cherished it. Looking back, I think that being taught by a flesh-and-blood human being helped me care more deeply about the subject itself, and it eventually shaped my decision to devote myself to Jewish education. Teaching, I have come to believe, is always personal, unfolding in the context of relationships. That is, while educators teach content, at a more fundamental level, they teach people.
Jewish education often succeeds at transmitting content while failing to cultivate a desire for future learning. My experience suggests that what matters is not only what students know at the end of a course, but also what they want. Do they feel hunger? Or, do they feel merely relief that an obligation has ended, and that they are one step closer to fulfilling the next one?
In this essay, I argue that Jewish education thrives when teachers see themselves—and take themselves seriously—as living texts, to be read by their students as closely as any daf of Gemara. Furthermore, education succeeds not only when teachers convey content, but when they awaken a sense of yearning that allows students to feel both that the tradition belongs to them and that they, in turn, belong to it. I call this sense ga’agu’a, “(teaching toward) yearning.”
Being Read
Early in my teaching career, a ninth-grade student came to my office after performing poorly on the first quiz of the semester. We reviewed the material together. Then, after asking if he could bring something else to my attention, he spoke with surprising directness. He experienced me, he said, as intimidating.
I listened carefully and nodded, trying to convey openness. Internally, if truth be told, I was stunned. Intimidating? The word did not compute. I thought of myself as positive, approachable, even goofy. I prided myself on being young at heart and carrying that aura into the classroom. Here, however, a student, likely feeling vulnerable after a setback, was standing before me and identifying a gap between how I understood myself and how I was experienced.
That moment of cognitive dissonance ultimately helped me grasp something concerning my understanding of myself as well as the broader experience of my profession: The way teachers perceive themselves does not necessarily bear close resemblance to how students experience them. This is not a failure of empathy on educators’ part but rather an enduring feature of formal education. Classrooms are structured by asymmetrical power. Teachers control grades, pacing, norms, and the emotional temperature of the room. Students read us closely for cues about safety, expectation, and belonging. Whether we intend it or not, our presence communicates.
Even as I was teaching my students to read the Torah as a mirror, this student, without knowing it, held one up to me. What mattered was not whether his reading of my presence matched my own self-understanding, but what was real for him. Once I recognized that I was being read, new educational questions came into focus for me:
How might I hold the space of learning more intentionally, so that students could feel both challenged and secure, invited rather than diminished?
Beyond the subject matter at hand, what kind of text was I, and what could I become in the eyes of my students?
Becoming Legible
Learning how I was perceived by a student prompted me to consider how legible I was as a teacher and how legible my class was as a learning environment. The student’s comment helped me appreciate that he was responding both to the intellectual demands of a high school Honors Judaics classroom and also to a lack of clarity about how to succeed within it. Up until that point, the class had functioned as a dynamic arena of ideas and textual sparring, reflecting my pedagogical vision. I realized that, notwithstanding attempts to encourage student participation and generate a joyful learning culture, I had not always made expectations and pathways for successful participation sufficiently visible to students.
In response, I implemented more intentional scaffolding which preserved intellectual rigor while, at the same time, offering clearer structures that expanded access to it. I became more explicit about the parameters of assignments, the kinds of preparation expected for class, and the forms of discourse that characterized strong interpretive and analytical work. I also became more curious about students’ experiences of the classroom, inviting feedback on how differing dimensions of the class were being received.
I made explicit that practices I had introduced earlier, including time for students to encounter texts and questions alone or in hevruta before public discussion, were designated to invite all student voices into the conversation. I explained the purpose of these structured moments of reflection and writing. This created additional entry points for students who needed time to formulate ideas and build confidence before speaking. It also encouraged rapidly-responding students to appreciate the importance of practicing attentive listening.
The student who initially felt intimidated eventually found his voice in the classroom. Whereas he had initially appeared withdrawn, he began participating actively in discussion and engaging texts with growing independence. Shifts in classroom ecology that I oversaw transformed how students positioned themselves in relationship to learning.
Experiences like this reinforced, as Sharon Feiman-Nemser has argued, that teacher self-awareness can be practically generative. When educators attend seriously to how they are being read, they gain the capacity to redesign learning environments in ways that preserve challenge while widening and deepening belonging. The goal is not to eliminate productive discomfort or intellectual risk, but to ensure that such rigor is experienced as an invitation rather than a barrier. Functionally, these shifts not only broadened participation but also enabled more students to undertake complex textual analysis with greater precision and poise.
The Teacher as Living Text
Understanding teachers as living texts casts educators into simultaneous roles as interpreters, witnesses, and creators of environments for learning.
Students are always and inevitably interpreting their teachers, in quest of information as well as meaning. They read tone, affect, expressions, and other facets of practice. They notice how teachers respond to varied dynamics within the classroom.
Students decide what they think about literal Jewish texts on the basis of assumptions and later views that they develop concerning the kinds of relationships that are possible with such texts. Their decisions are partially mediated through the person standing at the front of the room.
Diverse sources point to this reality. In “The Spirit of Education” (1953), Abraham Joshua Heschel described a need for what he called “textpeople” to supplement textbooks: “It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read; the text that they will never forget.” For Heschel, the teacher is not merely a conveyer of information but rather a living link between past and future. The educator, a human medium and midwife, enables Torah to become both accessible and alive. The teacher is not a “fountain” providing “intellectual beverages” on demand, but rather is and ought to be a “witness.” The comportment of this person, according to him, ought to testify to Jewish hope and integrity.
While Heschel’s words are sentimental, they are also anthropological and ethical. He is describing education as it actually works, not merely as it ought to. His writing makes clear that texts do not teach themselves, sources on a page do not take root on their own, and words do not become Torah without human engagement. They are brought to life when activated, interpreted, and embodied by living educators. Positioned at the helm of the classroom, the Judaics teacher stands in for the Jewish tradition. Surely, the authority teachers exercise depends upon institutions and communities that authorize them, handing them the proverbial chalk. Educators invite students to experience Jewish texts as something other than dead words of an obsolete past. Whether Torah feels brittle or durable, distant or intimate, depends in no small part on how it is mediated.
Stories from Hasidic literature sharpen this insight. In a 1922 collection, Martin Buber recounts a saying attributed to Reb Leib Sarah: “I did not go to the Maggid in order to hear Torah from him, but to see how he unlaces his felt shoes and laces them up again.” The point is not that shoelace-tying replaces talmud Torah, but that the teacher’s way of inhabiting the world is inevitably a part of the curriculum.
Such stories can be read as unduly celebrating charisma, but they need not be read that way. While charisma draws attention to the self, integrity draws attention through the self. This is a key distinction, pointing to the pedagogical value of coherence. When a teacher’s way of being resonates with what they teach, students encounter a tradition that feels integrated rather than compartmentalized. When there is dissonance, students notice that also. (To be sure, the perhaps inevitable dissonance a teacher experiences between being an employee of an institution and a presence in the classroom can be productive for the teacher’s reflection and growth.)
To say that teachers are living texts is not to elevate them beyond critique. It is, rather, to acknowledge responsibility. Because teachers are being read, their kavana, their intention,matters. Neutrality is an illusion. Silence communicates. Warmth communicates. Indeed, each and every thing, from chair set-up to tardiness policy, communicates something about expected norms of engagement in the classroom and the broader tradition.
The framing of the teacher as text, read and interpreted by students, carries risks. Teachers can eclipse texts, undermining the established and operative regime of checks and balances in the classroom. In general, the teacher and the Torah compete for standing to influence students, effectively balancing each other out. Unbridled authority of the teacher can slide into idolatry, in which students implicitly come to regard the teacher as divine. Whether or not the teacher is aware of the influence of their presence and their actions, students can mistake a misguided or unscrupulous teacher’s personality for Torah itself. Jewish tradition is wary of such distortions, and any conscientious pedagogy and community must hold the danger in view. The goal is not to center the teacher, but precisely to use the teacher’s presence to point beyond themselves.
The question, then, is not whether Judaics teachers are living texts. They are. The question is whether educators are willing to reflect on how they are being read and to take responsibility for how their presence shapes students’ relationships to learning, to tradition, and to themselves.
Ga’agu’a: Teaching Toward Yearning
The identification of the teacher as a living text sets the stage for ga’agu’a, a yearning that motivates lifelong learning. That is, educational success cannot be measured only by what students know at semester’s end, but also by what they desire to know when a class concludes. Do they long to continue learning?
Ga’agu’a is distinct from both mastery and enjoyment. It is the sense that something matters enough to pursue beyond the classroom, even when no one is watching.
Jewish education centers the transmission of knowledge but can simultaneously cultivate desire. How? Teachers can shift attention away from merely having students recall, analyze, or reflect on select parts of Torah by reconceiving pedagogical goals, and instead empower students to both want to know more and act on that yearning. That wanting is fragile and elusive, and it cannot be manufactured through technique alone. When it emerges, it does so in environments where learners feel the tradition is alive to them as they are becoming.
It is precisely here that the role of the teacher as living text becomes decisive. Students learn what Torah is like by observing how their teachers relate to it. They experience whether learning feels spacious, generous, animated (or not). Instinctively, they tend to notice whether questions are welcomed or merely tolerated. Long before students can articulate it, they are gathering data for themselves concerning a fundamental question: Is this a tradition—and a community—that cherishes me, and that I might cherish in return?
Ga’agu’a arises when students experience their teacher in real relationship with them, as well as with the material. Here, students are implicitly invited into a shared relationship with the material and simultaneously encouraged to develop distinctive relationships with it. This invitation carries expectations: It asks students to think, to wrestle, to risk misunderstanding, and sometimes to be unsettled. It also communicates that the struggle itself is worthwhile and that there is room—and potential dividends—for the student within it.
Ga’agu’a does not prescribe or entail a single mode of Jewish expression. Rather, it cultivates durable relationships with Torah that express themselves through study, ritual practice, tikkun olam, artistry, intellectual exploration, and other Jewish folkways.
Mastery and Ga’agu’a
Does centering ga’agu’a in our teaching undermine our attempts to teach mastery of the written text? Jewish education ought not decenter rigor or marginalize actual content in an attempt to “merely” inspire. Content mastery remains vital, enabling students to develop the capacity to independently engage the tradition and its sources. Literacy in Hebrew, familiarity with classical commentators, and the ability to navigate traditional textual genres are prerequisites for high-level engagement with Torah (not merely peripheral, nice-to-have skills). Lacking such competencies, students come to depend upon mediators and others’ interpretations as crutches. Only by developing specific competencies can learners meaningfully participate in the interpretive tradition that characterizes Jewish intellectual and spiritual life. While the quest for mastery of Jewish content is cognitively useful for adolescent brains, and academically valuable for their lives, it is also a condition of both meaningful belonging and creativity in Jewish community.
Mastery alone, to be sure, does not in and of itself generate ongoing commitment to Jewish text exploration in learners. Many Jews, including Jewish day school graduates, once possessed substantial textual competence but do not currently undertake Jewish learning as a living existential pursuit. Their knowledge, sometimes impressive, can function as merely archival, a repository of Jewish factoids and ephemera from years long past. Mastery frequently fails to persist without affective investment. This reality begs a pedagogical question: What conditions motivate learners to develop a living and a kevah, or habitual, relationship with the learning of Jewish sources?
Ga’agu’a, rather than standing in tension with the acquisition of content, in fact undergirds the ongoing pursuit of content knowledge. As but one example from the Jewish tradition, Moses responded to the spark of the burning bush with a yearning that shaped his life and that of the Jewish people.
While I was serving in an administrative capacity at a Jewish high school, a parent of a transfer student shared concern with me that his daughter had learned little Hebrew vocabulary and was unable to decipher various Rashi script letters. His words and tone communicated: What was the point of transferring my daughter to a Jewish school if she is not squarely on the road to attaining mastery of Judaic content? Is your school right for our family? In responding, I validated his concern and conveyed that, on the basis of my impressions and those of a colleague, she seemed to be developing internal motivation as she expressed hunger to learn more about Jewish life and learning on her terms. I hoped to convey that she was, in fact, squarely on the road to attaining mastery; akin to the tortoise in the well-known fable, she seemed to be gradually developing skills and curiosity which could sustain her pursuit of meaningful mastery in the short run, as well as profound creativity in the long run.
Short-term fluency and long-term existential commitment unfold on different timelines; they need not compete, and ideally, they reinforce one another. Jewish educators need not choose between mastery and yearning if they deliberately design learning environments wherein both can flourish.
From Wheat to Bread: Going Through and Beyond the Text
Torah’s purpose is not merely preservation but active engagement; it is meant to be transformed, applied, and brought to life.
A parable from Seder Eliyahu Zuta illustrates this: A king gives two of his servants each a kab of wheat and a bundle of flax. One servant, described as wise, takes the flax and weaves a beautiful cloth. He also takes the wheat and grinds it, kneads it, bakes it, and sets the bread on the table, covered by the cloth, awaiting the king’s return. The other servant, described as foolish, does nothing.
Within its literary context, the King should be understood as God and the materials he gives as Torah. The wise servant is like the rabbis of late antiquity, who understand creative human engagement and interpretation as the proper response to a divine gift. In its original historical context, the foolish servant was likely imagined to be a Karaite Jew who rejected the rabbinic approach and sought to understand the Torah without interpretation. Just prior to the parable, the text asserts that “mikra and mishnah both came from the mouth of the Greatness,” framing both written and oral Torah as originating in Sinaitic revelation.
The parable also has pedagogic implications. Before unpacking them, it is worth noticing that the king gives no explicit instructions. The servants receive raw materials but no directions or training. Why does one servant act upon the materials while the other sits on them? One plausible explanation is desire: One servant feels drawn to act upon the wheat and the flax, while the other does not. Another is authorization: Perhaps both feel desire, but only one feels permitted to transform what has been given. Either way, the text suggests that Torah is not meant to be safeguarded through stasis but rather preserved through use.
The parable also raises a question about the nature of the gift itself. Was the wheat given for safekeeping, or was it transferred in a way that demanded action? The conclusion of the passage answers decisively, suggesting that the very giving of wheat implies grinding and baking, just as flax implies weaving, self-evident “through the rules of the interpretive process.” To refrain from acting consistent with such implications is thus not neutral custodianship, but rather troubling neglect. The raw material of Torah (obviously) demands human labor if it is not to spoil.
Read in this way, the parable teaches us that talmud Torah is neither simple nor passive. It requires the involvement of the learner’s whole self, including imagination and desire. What kind of teacher sets such a learner on her path? Torah becomes sustaining only when it is worked with, applied, and ushered into the world. The parable thus models a tradition that depends on human engagement and ongoing interpretation, rather than preservation alone.
Teachers cannot compel ga’agu’a, but they can model curiosity and integrity in their own encounters with Torah. They can help learners to experience Torah as something that addresses them and calls for response. Teaching requires existential honesty: a willingness to tremble before the text and before one’s students, and to demonstrate that Torah is not merely inherited, but continually brought to life. Jewish education that gets learners to want to proverbially “bake” Torah allows the text to become a source of renewable energy in learners’ lives and the life of the world.
Ma’aseh: What This Looks Like in Practice
If the wheat must be baked, how do teachers translate this principle into daily classroom practice? How does a pedagogy of ga’agu’a play out, takhles (practically speaking), in day-to-day educational life?
Classrooms as living spaces: Learning must feel dynamic, a site of events, rather than a site of rehearsed lessons on automatic replay.
Curiosity in action: Teachers practice ethnographic attentiveness to their students’ personalities, interpretations, and life experiences. They notice both what is expressed and what is left unsaid.
Relational care: Responding to moments of vulnerability, such as anxiety, grief, or confusion, builds trust and creates enduring connections between learning and life.
Challenge with support: Students need space to struggle while knowing that they are being seen and guided.
What practical commitments can teachers undertake as they cultivate ga’agu’a?
Model existential engagement with texts (for example, briefly modeling for students how a passage challenges one’s own assumptions).
Connect learning to real-life, ethical, and existential questions (for example, asking students to express how a sugya reframes a moral dilemma they recognize from being a contemporary teenager).
Make expectations and pathways to success transparent.
Structure private and paired reflection before public participation.
Observe, adapt, and respond to students’ unique needs and styles.
Protect intellectual risk-taking while striving to ensure belonging.
Signal that Torah belongs to diverse learners, giving implicit and explicit authorization for full participation.
By enacting such commitments, teachers create classrooms in which technical mastery and yearning mutually reinforce each other.
Towards a Common Culture of Ga’agu’a
Even with everything that underappreciated teachers are already responsible for, I am asking them to be existential and relational, and to induce yearning. It’s a big ask, and I know that not every teacher will be ready to take it on.
This work is more possible when it is done in community. Educational institutions must enable material, relational, and professional conditions that support ongoing teacher growth. Administrators, parents, funders, and the broader community can collectively honor teacher vulnerability and integrity, multiplying the effect of relationally rich education. The impact will then extend beyond our schools and benefit all of us, as we will be building cultures characterized by deep and thick Jewish knowledge, creativity, curiosity, and reflection.
A quotation often (though likely apocryphally) attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the early-twentieth-century author of TheLittle Prince, reads, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
Now, in the twenty-first century, can we empower students to long for the vast and endless sea of Torah and the life it inspires?
