“What is a problem in Jewish Studies that can be solved with technology?” This is a question that I asked students in order to brainstorm ideas for a national technology grant. The grant requires a student to think of a problem in Jewish Studies that can be solved with a new tech idea. The grant will provide funding for the project and for the teacher who helps move the project along.

Can you think of a problem in Jewish Studies?

This question was posed to students. I’ll admit that even I couldn’t think of an idea to help guide them. Luckily, one of our 8th graders came up with a genius idea. He admitted that the text of the Tanakh is extremely difficult to understand, even in English. The language is very difficult. He asked, “Why is there no middle-school level text we can read from?”

This student is proposing that we build an open-source website to which middle schoolers across the country can contribute their own translations of the text. The end product would be a middle-school level translation of the Torah! Bring the Torah to the people!

Stay tuned to see if we win the grant…