Yesterday, I took part in a really neat program that a local Jewish school ran. Tarbut v’Torah in Irvine has its high school seniors deliver a d’var Torah on a given parashah at some point during the school year. To help them with their speeches, Tarbut v’Torah invited various rabbis from the area to come in and to have the students bounce their thoughts, questions, and ideas on their assigned parshiyot off of them.
The set-up was a round robin “Speed-dating”-style, wherein each student got 7 minutes with various rabbis in a total time-span of just under an hour-and-a-half, which focussed the conversations and allowed the students to be able to interact with and inquire of different rabbis to get different perspectives on their topics.
I enjoyed it, not only because I enjoyed helping out these students in thinking about their respective sections of Torah, but also because it pushed me to deal with questions I wouldn’t have otherwise have considered. I was glad to have helped out with their divrei Torah and wish them the best in their developing of their divrei Torah.