Discover your roots through Jewish learning.
Welcome to 36 LEARNING MATTERS. I am Avi Bernstein-Nahar, founder and principal. I can help you and your community discover learning that matters. When you experience learning that matters deeply, helps you clarify your educational vision, and empowers your faculty to teach, you may discover roots in Jewish life* you did not even know you had. Shall we get started? Read here about my own personal quest to pursue a deep and meaningful Jewish life.
*A tradition is the ground beneath learning that matters, and is hardly limited in its applicability to just the Jewish community. I am especially interested in working with chaplains, small colleges with religious and civic charters, departments of campus religious life and the like to help them clarify their mission in the context of their tradition.
What is a tradition? A tradition is a socially embodied argument about how to live within the community that claims to be animated by that very tradition. This notion has been explored with great profundity by Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Notre Dame, 1981, esp. chapters 3, “Emotivism: Social Content and Social Context,” and Chapter 15, “The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition.”
The notion of an American tradition in this very sense has been explored with great skill by Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart, UC Berkeley, 1985, esp. chapter 2, “Culture and Character, the Historical Conversation,” and by Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 2005, esp. Parts I & II.
What Roots?
- Jewish Life is rooted in Jewish Study and Jewish Practice: Check out these bridges into the world of texts, history and ideas that matter!
- How did our near ancestors, also facing crisis and cataclysm, envision a Jewish life that would matter, even in the face of cultural collapse? Check out our Jewish Thought courses, with special curricular strength in the writings of Heschel, Rosenzweig, Buber, and others hailing from their world!
- Does the Jewish Tradition contain an ethics and a politics? Yes, certainly in the version that has come down to me! To learn more, check out our Jewish politics offerings.
For Individuals
Choose from days-of-study, week-long-intensives, five-to-ten-week courses, or a year-long academy.
Avi is a gifted and passionate teacher. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to study with him!
For Organizations
Consult with us to design the adult Jewish learning approach that will matter most to you and your students.
Your organization will shift into a higher gear by having Avi mentor your teachers. He’ll make them better, and not just for the next class, but – since we’re talking about habits of mind and heart – teaching skills they take on-board forever.
Introducing
2026 FRANZ ROSENZWEIG
SUMMER ACADEMY
Sponsored by the Goethe Institut – Boston
and 36 LEARNING MATTERS
July 19 – July 24
In-person and Online
Grapple in a highly collaborative environment with Franz Rosenzweig’s Hegel and the State, building the skills and understanding to interpret an author many consider to be the preeminent Jewish theorist of the modern era.
