Wrestling with texts and observing shoes in an ancient learning partnership, a havruta

While a quick glance at the photo might suggest that I am promoting a popular coffeehouse chain, I aim to show — and to raise up another kind of commerce. It is a transaction in which no monies are exchanged and whose value is incalculable: an ancient learning partnership, a havruta (Aramaic term for study partner).

The glowing, incandescent young woman on my right is Felegosh, my havruta. Eighteen years ago, this Sherut Leumi (Israel National Service Corps) volunteer alumna rode on her father’s shoulders as he walked Ethiopian lowlands, steppes, and semi-desert six months with his family and extended community. Their destination: Addis Ababa, this ancient African nation’s capital from where a plane brought them to their ancestral home, Israel.

(This year, Felegosh is an emissary in Atlanta, Georgia, where her team of Bnei Akiva volunteers is working with others to strengthen Jewish identity and instill a love for Israel and study of Torah through havrutot [plural of havruta], Shabbat and festival celebrations, community programming, and other informal education activities. More than seven years ago, I learned with my first havruta, Shimon, in the Atlanta Torah MiTzion program.)

While Jewish tradition has always valued learning with others, learning with one's peers is special.

I have learned much from my teachers, but from my friends more than my teachers.
From the Talmud (BT Ta'anit 7a)

For this most heterogeneous pair of peers, mutual respect and affection help bridge obvious differences in age, physical appearance, and cultural background. And though Felegosh and I approach our tradition from vastly different worldviews and assumptions and our practice of religious observance is at almost polar-opposite levels, we are learning much and well as we tap into each other’s sometimes radically different lives.

What have we been studying since Felegosh arrived in August?

• Selected paragraphs on repentance by Shlomo Aviner and Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal (contemporary Jerusalem rabbis and ideologues of the national camp in Israel) and excerpts from Hilchot tshuva (Laws of Repentance) by Maimonides, the 12th century Spanish-born Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician.
  
  
• The d'var Torah (words of Torah) that my cousin wrote on the presentation of a hand-lettered Torah scroll. The scroll was commissioned as an ilui neshama, an elevation of soul (or spirit) of Noam Yaakov Mayerson, of blessed memory: son, brother, uncle, and friend killed in the Second Lebanon War.
  
  
• Psalm 119
  

Yet I am learning not just by studying texts but also by noticing the attitudes that drive much of my partner’s input.

Last week, for example, we sat at a table where Felegosh was squinting in the light of the setting sun while the speakers broadcast loud music over our heads. Both distractions bothered me, and so I asked, “do you want to move to a shadier spot and should I ask the barista to lower the volume?” “Not at all,” her reply. “These are mere incidentals to our business, our learning. Almost nothing merits distracting or interrupting us.”

It has been said that if you want to learn from your rabbi (teacher), study how the rabbi ties his shoes. And I am studying how Felegosh “ties” her turquoise Crocs!