I began Areyvut in September 2002 and I attended CAJE 29, a Jewish education conference at Hofstra University in the summer of 2004 which is where I was fortunate to have met Fred Claar, a passionate Jew committed to making high caliber Jewish education relevant to tweens and teens. Over the years, I have gained so much from knowing and learning from Fred and was deeply honored and blessed to have had him serve in the past on the Areyvut Board.
One of Fred’s many initiatives and projects was focused on making the Parsha HaShavua, the weekly Torah portion, accessible to parents and educators. Over the years, Fred has accomplished this via a wide variety of efforts and projects including creating valuesandethics.org and publishing Values and Ethics: Torah Topics for Today. Through these and his many other efforts, Fred has literally impacted thousands and thousands of families.
A few years back (to be precise on June 10, 2021), I asked Fred for his permission for Areyvut to develop new content based on his model and approach. Fred replied immediately and said, “Delighted to work with you, in any way, with this project.” Some things take a bit longer than we anticipate and unfortunately that was the case for this project.
Thankfully, in the summer of 2023, Kalya Goldberger, a veteran of Areyvut’s initial Teen Board, committed to working on the project. The goal was to have Kayla develop the content throughout 5784, the 2023–2024 cycle, in real time each week. Kayla, based in Israel, developed content immediately in the aftermath of the atrocities of October 7th. Reading what she developed weekly was incredibly moving and powerful. The eternal wisdom of the Torah and Kayla’s ability to connect it to what was transpiring in Israel and what global Jewry was dealing with was a gift, one that you are now still benefitting from.
I thank Fred Claar for inspiring me and so many others, Kalya Goldberger for developing the incredibly meaningful, powerful and timely content that you see here and Rena Ray for her design work and for being a genuine ongoing partner.
As I write this, Israel is still at war and there are still 50 hostages being held in Gaza. I passionately pray that as you see and use this, not only is this current war over and all the hostages have been returned to their families, but that Israel has genuine peace and the ability to live with its neighbors. May we all never forget all the sacrifices of our chayalim, the hostages, their families and all of Am Yisrael. May we really understand and believe fervently today and every day: Am Yisrael Chai.
Parsha Discussions Year One 23-24
