Edna Levy is a bundle of energy. In the classroom she curls up on a chair, feet tucked underneath, as she asks the women in her recent “Sheroes of the Bible” class to look at the text. “What’s the Hebrew used for the basket carrying Moses?” she asks. A student finds the word ‘teva’ and recalls it was used in the portion about Noah. It’s not just “a basket” Levy agrees, but something sturdier. Maybe there’s a parallel between Noah’s “saving humanity” and Moses’ potential “saving of the Jewish people.”
“Was it luck or chance?” Levy asks next, as she unwinds her legs and sits astride the arm of her chair. One responds, “There’s serious calculation here.”
Levy’s style has some serious calculation as well; as a Jewish educator her goal is to make her students see beyond the “old Hebrew school version” that most adults have to overcome. “I have found that there is some odd coincidence between what I sign up to teach, and what my own personal Jewish soul-journey is searching for,” Levy admits. “So I have always ended up learning as much or more than I am teaching, or being more influenced than I expected.” Yet she didn’t start out to become a teacher.
Growing up in a household as the oldest daughter of Sephardi parents who emigrated from Iraq to Canada to the United States, Levy’s formative years included teenage rebellion — but made her appreciate her heritage and want to learn more. “When I was a kid, those who didn’t have that Ashkenazi background might have said ‘I don’t have the right story’,” Levy explains. “So I sometimes feel left out whenever I hear Yiddish — as my grandparents spoke Arabic. Yet overall I do feel included in Yiddishkeit.”
Levy’s parents, Claudette and Nouri Levy, live here now, mostly to be near their daughter and son-in-law, Jacob Schreiber (executive director of the Jewish Community Center) and their three children: Gavri, 16, Maya, 12, and Simi, 9. It’s the first time since those teen years in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, that she’s lived in the same community with them.
“My mother, younger brother and sister became more observant when I was in high school,” Levy recalls. She rebelled, but instead of their religiosity driving her away from Judaism, it “sparked my Zionism and learning.” She looked for meaning in Judaism, practicing what years later she would learn was Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s philosophy: “You don’t have to be wrong for me to be right.”
She felt a strong connection to the land of Israel, which led her to a long visit at age 19, where she lived with her Iraqi cousins, learned Hebrew and worked. She returned to Israel after graduating from Queen’s University in Canada. And that’s where she met Jacob Schreiber, a young New Yorker who had just made aliyah.
“It was a whirlwind romance,” she says with a grin. Five months later, Levy left for graduate school at the University of California at Irvine and for Jacob, it was “lose her or follow.” Luckily he found a job there while Levy completed the course work toward her doctorate in political science. Israel beckoned again, and the couple returned, now as a married couple, when the Anti-Defamation League hired Schreiber in its Jerusalem office.
That allowed Levy to finish her dissertation about gender and militarism in Israel. “My thesis came from frustration with women’s status in Israel,” Levy says. “It pits the myth of equality against what it means to be an Israeli, through service in the army.”
The couple spent four years in Israel before Jacob accepted a position in Rochester, N.Y., as assistant director of the JCC. That started Levy on a path as a Jewish educator. A local temple had an opening for a part time director of Jewish education. “I had a Ph.D.,” Levy recalls, “and was already an educator, but I didn’t have the experience in Jewish content.” That job allowed her to develop those skills.
Her Rochester stint gave Levy the credentials she needed when the couple moved to Atlanta. She taught Melton courses, and staffed summers at local Jewish camps. The last two years there, Levy became director of the Lisa Brill Institute for Lifelong Jewish Learning at the JCC.
And since moving here in the summer of 2009, she’s enjoying – and expanding – her role as a Jewish “coach.” Levy describes her role as “Sort of a ready-to-tailor-make-hands-on-Jewish-educational-experiences for individuals and families. She adds, “The title somehow conveys that I can teach Jewish-ness — beyond the classroom and beyond the right-and-wrong-how-to’s.”
Levy is coordinating “Ayeka” — a series of spiritual, or personal growth, workshops. “Ayeka is less about Jewish education and more about Jewish transformation. It is a way of increasing awareness, gratitude, presence in the everyday, through Jewish texts,” she adds. Ayeka’s founder, Rabbi Aryeh Ben-David, is coming to KC as a Scholar-in-Residence in May.
And she is facilitating Foundations — Jewish Values for Parents. “It’s a Melton-created class,” she explains, with “lots of discussion and text study for parents of all backgrounds and perspectives.” She’s even taught a Skype-version with a parent group in Wichita.
Levy describes Ayeka, as “a heart-centered way of learning Jewish texts and ideas.” She says she has found herself “more open to, wrestling with, thinking about the questions and issues.” And so perhaps that’s why this energetic Jewish teacher adds, “this may be one reason why I enjoy teaching and find it fulfilling — I love grappling with texts or ideas along with other learners — it’s my way of making meaning for myself.”