For rabbis and educators who dedicate their life to teaching Torah, it can be difficult to find the time to simply “sit and learn” in a challenging chabura. To help solve this, as a part of their staff enrichment, the National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) is sponsoring a free online learning chabura and is opening it to any rabbi around the globe who may benefit from this new venture.
The chabura will use online interactive classroom technology provided by Project Sinai and be led by Rabbi Menachem Nissel, a lecturer for The Ner LeElef Outreach and Leadership Training Program and the rabbinic resource for NCSY. The chabura will be structured as follows:
1. Every Friday morning, participants will receive a set of marei mekomos in your inbox. The marei mekomos will be identified as “crucial” or “supplementary.” In so doing, those who wish to learn and prepare for the chabura in a morning or afternoon seder, will have challenging material to study. Others, who may only have a seder a week, can still get a lot out of the shiur.
2. All the people in the chabura will learn Maseches Brachos from the beginning with the goal of really knowing the entire tractate.
3. The shiur itself will focus on three components: (a) a solid understanding of the Gemara, Rashi and Tosefos (b) lomdus – a particular topic will be chosen to be studied “b’iyun rav” (c) a halacha l’maaseh component which takes the topic learned into the realm of halacha.
4. All participants will receive an email with a “key points summary” of the shiur.
Please note: The shiurim will be designed so that if you miss one, it will not affect understanding the next shiur. Plus, the shiurim will be posted on the website so that if you miss one, you can catch it at your own convenience. Best of all, Rabbi Nissel will help arrange study partners, so that you can have a Skype or Google Hangout session with someone else on the planet who is on a compatible level to yours.
For information, please email: onlinechaburah@gmail.com. Hatzlacha!
