Beyond the Highlights: Torah, Growth, and Real Connection

 

Guest Rav Moshe Moskowitz 

Overview:This episode features Rav Moshe Moskowitz, JLC Director at Johns Hopkins, discussing his approach to Torah learning, his connection to the Pachad Yitzchak, and how he connects with students through Torah. He shares personal stories, offers insights on dealing with challenges, and shares powerful pieces of Torah relevant to the current times.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Pachad Yitzchak: Rav Moshe’s journey of appreciating its depth and how it reveals meaning in seemingly simple concepts.

• Connecting With Students: Learning their experiences, finding relevant Torah, and understanding their growth is not static.

• Campus Work Evolution: Requires hard decisions, meeting students where they are, and understanding that your picture of their success might be wrong.
• Torah for Today: Finding the Torah that helps us with our struggles, including balancing the ideas of Eish Kodesh (finding strength) and Derech haMelech (big ideas about connection).

• The value of Internalization Using Torah teachings to understand that the best course isn't always action, and to find value in the internal process of an experience.

• Torah Within: Recognizing that the voice of God can be found within our own thoughts.

• A Sweet Spot that is where your passions meet your students, and finding a way to bring it all together.

• The Importance of Translation: Not just repeating Torah but finding ways to create a relevant and transformative experience for students.

• Recognizing that not all responses are made for an Instagram post or for a fundraising campaign, but internal and deep.

• The Banal and the Good: That some of the most challenging things, and impactful things, happen in ways that feel banal and do not grab headlines.

• The Montage and Our Current Culture how the “montage” element of our culture is so destructive because it emphasizes only highlights.

• The Need for Action & Feeling Connected: When it comes to action, Rav Moshe shares that we must do it with a sense of being a part of what is going on rather than as a distant spectator and to ask what does going to the “frontlines” look like today.

Takeaway:This episode highlights the importance of seeking deeper meaning in Torah, understanding the complexities of student experiences, and finding the Torah that resonates with each individual. It emphasizes that growth can be internal, gradual, and not always as linear as we might think.