Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, has had meetings recently with senators on Capitol Hill in preparation for her confirmation hearings. Americans are rightly paying attention to concerns about childhood education, but learning is also a lifelong endeavor.
Learning is the pursuit of wisdom and clarity. We all have big questions and search for answers in endless places. We seek truth in books, therapists’ offices and through meditation. We search for meaning in The New York Times, Instagram reels and the words of mentors.
But there’s one place many of us overlook when we need help addressing the big questions in life: Jewish wisdom. Perhaps this is because the sources are old or because religion can get a bad rap.
Jewish teachings offer a deep well of wisdom. And while the lessons are indeed old, they are also true and have stood the test of time by guiding generations of people wrestling with big questions.
Judaism introduced a radical idea to our world thousands of years ago: the notion that wisdom belongs to all of us. Rituals and knowledge were never destined to be held by an elite few within the Jewish community. We do not seek communion at the hands of a priestly leader or require expert translation to be in communication with God. Jewish tradition encourages us to read and question and learn and act, individually and as a community.
Today, the idea that people can chart their own engagement and destiny without an intermediary feels normal. But it was once revolutionary. And even now, direct access to wisdom remains a powerful inheritance.
Of course, we need help accessing that inheritance. More than 3,000 years of accumulated wisdom can feel overwhelming. Most of us aren’t ready to pick up a page of Talmud and immediately pull out insights. This is where teachers come in.
Consider William Shakespeare’s works. Without guidance, it’s easy to get lost in the words of a Shakespearean play and miss the deeper meaning. When I first encountered his work in high school, I struggled with the language and kept losing track of who was speaking or what was happening. But I was lucky to have a great teacher, Christine Eastus, who brought those old-fashioned words to life so that I could see the trials of parenting in passages of “King Lear” and feel the anguish of adolescence in the lines of “Romeo and Juliet.” These are universal experiences, and, like Shakespeare, Judaism offers important advice about navigating them.
A partner at a law firm might be thinking about ethics and how to make difficult choices. The executive director of a nonprofit may be exploring how to be a better leader and how to motivate her community. A parent may be struggling to balance the needs of his child with caring for aging parents and meeting professional obligations. But how to bring Jewish wisdom into our daily lives, particularly among competing fast-moving schedules, is a challenge. The right teacher who can meet one-on-one with Jewish professionals on a flexible basis, though, can make the ancient wisdom of our people relevant and accessible to the experiences any learner faces.
It turns out that the rabbis who compiled the Talmud were deeply concerned with these kinds of complex questions. They were focused on life as we live it, not theoretical ideals. They examined what it means to live in a community and be a good person and what our obligations are as members of families. And we can still draw on their teachings to guide our modern lives.
Consider a passage in the Mishnah (Avot 5:21) that outlines the stages of learning across a lifetime. At 5, a child begins studying Torah; at 15, Talmud. At 30, a person gains strength; at 50, wisdom. While these milestones don’t precisely match modern educational practices, they remind us that learning and growth happen throughout life. The sages understood what it means to get older, continue growing and contribute to younger generations. Their timeless wisdom can help us unpack our fears and questions about aging and maturity with insight and grace.
Jewish learning is not about being told what you’re “supposed” to do or how to “be more Jewish.” It’s about using the wisdom revealed in Jewish sources to enrich our lives in ways that matter to us.
As we face life’s big questions, we can turn to endless gurus and thought leaders in the hope of finding meaning. Or we can find the guidance we crave in a source that was there all along—our shared inheritance. Each of us need only accompany a trusted educator through an already-open door to draw on Jewish wisdom as a powerful source of meaning in our own lives.