In 2023, I had the privilege of visiting the Jewish community on the island of Djerba in Tunisia. This small community of around 2,000 Jews makes education a central priority. For boys on the island, learning begins each morning with structured study in the yeshiva and continues throughout the afternoon in synagogues, where students sit for Talmud lessons with older peers and with the community’s rabbi, Haim Bittan.
There, I encountered a vision of Jewish learning that felt at once ancient and startlingly alive: late in the day, students leaned over well-worn books, murmuring verses in rhythmic cadence, repeating phrases until they settled into memory. When I asked what they were doing, several boys answered instinctively: ani m’shanen, “I am reviewing, repeating, memorizing.” The word required no explanation. Memorization was not a strategy for assessment; it was the substance of study itself.
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