A few weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, a woman in her forties logged onto Zoom for her first Jewish learning session since childhood. She didn’t come with a clear goal. She wasn’t looking to become more observant or mark a lifecycle event. She came because she couldn’t shake a general sense of unease about Israel, about antisemitism, about what it means to raise Jewish children in this moment.

Her teacher, after listening to her describe her experience, suggested that they begin with the Book of Psalms.

At first, the words felt distant. Then, slowly, they didn’t. Poetry that had felt old and inaccessible slowly became understandable. The fear, the disorientation, the search for steadiness was all there. Week by week, the practice of returning to the text gave shape to feelings that had been hard to name. It didn’t resolve the uncertainty. But it made it more navigable.

I hear a version of this story almost every day. 

For many Jews, this decade, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Oct. 7 attacks and the global surge in antisemitism, has carried a sustained sense of danger and uncertainty. Crisis once felt like disruption and now feels like a sustained condition. In many ways, it is a condition our ancestors would recognize. For much of our history, Jewish life was precarious, sometimes frightening and rarely predictable. 

Much of the communal response has focused, understandably, on security, advocacy, public policy. But beneath those urgent needs is a quieter question: How do we live with this level of uncertainty over time?

Our answer has been hiding in plain sight. 

Jewish learning is often framed as enrichment; as something for children, or for adults with time and prior knowledge, or as preparation for a lifecycle event. But that framing misses learning’s deeper function. At its core, Jewish learning is a resilience practice. 

It is not only about what is studied, but the act of studying itself: the discipline of returning regularly to a set of texts and questions that are bigger than the present moment. It creates rhythm where there is chaos. It offers language for experiences that feel isolating. And it situates the learner within a continuum, reminding them that others have wrestled with these same fears before.

If Jews are going to thrive in this moment, we cannot leave 3,000 years of our collective wisdom confined to childhood classrooms.

Judaism is a lifelong practice. When we center learning in that experience, adults can access and reaccess it at any stage, especially in moments of searching or instability.

That shift has practical implications. It means investing in adult learning with the same seriousness as youth education; and not just one-off programs, but sustained study. It means tweaking learning experiences so that people with little or no background can feel welcome and curiosity, not prior knowledge, is the prerequisite for participation. It means expanding models beyond the classroom to include one-on-one or small-group study, where learners can bring real questions and not feel exposed. And it means integrating Jewish texts into the moments when people are actively seeking meaning after loss, during crisis or in periods of transition.

Different age groups require different approaches. Teenagers can benefit from structured, discussion-based learning that helps them process identity and belonging. Young adults often seek meaning in peer cohorts, where learning is as much about connection as content. Many adults, especially in midlife, are looking for something quieter but no less urgent: a way to make sense of anxiety, responsibility and change. At every age, Jewish study reminds us that we are part of something far larger than any one of us, a sense of connection that psychologists like Jonathan Haidt, Lisa Damour and Tovah Klein remind us is foundational to mental health.

In each case, the goal is not mastery. It is engagement.

In recent years, new models have begun to emerge that reflect this broader understanding. Independent educators, community initiatives and digital platforms are lowering barriers to entry and meeting learners where they are. Some, like the Jewish Learning Collaborative, offer flexible, personalized study, pairing individuals with teachers for one-on-one learning shaped around their interests and questions. Others build small cohorts or topical series that respond directly to current events.

Increasingly, individuals are seeking out text study in response to real-time questions: Parents turning to the prophets to process fear after the Oct. 7 attacks, college students studying passages about identity and responsibility in the face of antisemitism on campus or professionals carving out weekly time to study in order to create structure in an otherwise chaotic news cycle. These approaches are expanding the ecosystem in necessary ways, because the question is no longer whether Jewish learning matters — it is whether Jewish learning is accessible, relevant and integrated enough to serve people in the moments they actually need it.

We should not expect the coming years to feel stable, but we can equip ourselves with practices that make instability more livable. Jewish learning is one of those practices, not because it provides easy answers, but because it offers something more durable: a way of thinking, questioning and returning that helps people not only survive crisis but live meaningfully within it. 

Rabbi Ana Bonnheim is the founding executive director of the Jewish Learning Collaborative, which is incubated at Mem Global.