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Poster Commentary
"Great teachers enable students to find their own questions in the text."Nechama Leibowitz
Poster design:Ofra Amit

Commentary by Erica Brown

In her commentary on the Book of Genesis Nechama Leibowitz writes, "Surely even one light illumines far more than itself, and one spark is sufficient to penetrate the thickest darkness.” Through her teaching, Nechama (as she was affectionately called by her students) was a light that illumined far more than herself.

She received her doctorate in Germany and moved to Israel from Berlin in 1930, where she taught Bible at both Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But her influence as a master educator was most felt beyond the walls of the Academy.

Nechama taught thousands of people throughout Israel as a contributor on Voice of Israel radio and by disseminating through the mail her legendary gilyonot – worksheets with questions on the weekly Torah portion. Ultimately, it was not answers she was seeking but better questions. Great teachers enable students to find their own question in the text. She believed there was no better way to own a spiritual inheritance than by asking questions of the text and adding one’s own voice to the enduring conversation of commentary.

A short woman with a quick wit, broad smile, and jaunty beret, Nechama paced in her interactive classroom, pausing to share stories about taxi drivers and everyday life in Israel that shed light on Torah teachings. When she died, Nechama had no children of her own to say Kaddish. Instead, thousands of her students – her spiritual children – stood at her funeral and recited it. She asked that only one word be put on her tombstone: Morah. Teacher.

Erica Brown is a writer and Jewish educator. She is a faculty member at the Wexner Foundation, a former Jerusalem Fellow, a Covenant Award winner, and an Avi Chai Fellow. Her latest book is Take Your Soul to Work.

 

Author
Nechama Leibowitz
1905-1997
Israel
Bible teacher
  • Born 1905 in Riga, Latvia – Died 1997 in Jerusalem, Israel
  • Renowned Israeli Bible teacher – Champion of “active learning” of Bible and its commentaries
  • Wrote popular five-volume Studies in the Weekly Parasha, based on her Torah worksheets
  • Awarded Israel Prize for education and Bialik Prize for Jewish thought

“When I was a schoolgirl in Germany, our teacher presented one of those old-style pull-down maps. It was a map of Hungary. My friend sitting next to me leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, with great sarcasm: “That’s the only thing missing in my life right now.” Ironically, I think back often on that little whisper. It’s one of the reasons I chose education, determined to be the kind of teacher that pulls students in and gets them excited about learning.”

Told in a Jerusalem classroom, as recounted by Blu Greenberg

 

Artist
Ofra Amit
Tel Aviv
Illustrator
Educator

Ofra Amit is an Israeli illustrator. She studied at Wizo Canada Institute of Design in Haifa and illustrates for magazines, newspapers, and children’s books. Her work has earned international awards, including IBBY Honor Award, Israel Museum Gold Medal Award, and honors from Communication Arts Illustration Annual, Applied Arts Illustration Annual, and the Bologna Fair Illustrators’ Exhibition.

"While working on Nechama Leibowitz’s poster, I used a technique of scratching the painted surface with an art knife and exposing the layers underneath. This way of working may be parallel to Leibowitz’s way of probing and asking questions, peeling off the upper surface of the text to reveal the deeper layers. By engraving the wrinkles in her face, one by one, I tried to portray her authenticity, her honesty, and how humble she was. At first, the open book in front of her included text, but later on I decided to leave it blank because I thought it would be a better visual expression of  Leibowitz’s ongoing search for truth – a search in which she provided space for her students to discover their own truths."

 

Quote
"Great teachers enable students to find their own questions in the text."Nechama Leibowitz