The scope of Jewish programming for Torontonians in their 20s and 30s is getting a little meatier thanks to an initiative that’s all about education, and aims to build a sense of community in the process.

Meet the Lishma Jewish Learning Project, an ongoing collaborative venture run by young leaders from five different Toronto organizations: Aaron Rotenberg from the Annex Shul, Cara Gold from the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre (MNJCC), Holy Blossom Temple’s Rabbi Jordan Helfman, Yacov Fruchter from Beth Tzedec and Jenny Isaacs, the founder of Base, a pluralistic beit midrash.

Lishma, meaning “for its own sake,” began in November 2018 and, as its name suggests, is framed around the concept of learning for the sake of learning. “It’s not for getting a grade or a degree. It’s because you want to learn,” says Fruchter, director of community building and spiritual engagement at Beth Tzedec Congregation in midtown Toronto.

The idea for Lishma grew out of a session at the MNJCC’s 2018 tikun leil Shavuot all-night learning festival, when nine community members in their 20s and 30s led a conversation about how they and their peers envision Jewish life in Toronto.

“There can often be a lot of talk in the community about what we should be doing for young people, but it’s rare to have young people setting the agenda for themselves,” says Gold, manager of downtown Jewish life at the MNJCC and a participant in last year’s discussion.

“There’s a thirst and a need for young people to have a sense of community,” adds Fruchter.

After their initial late-night conversation, leaders from the five organizations got together to develop the idea. Gold says the thought was, “Let’s actually make something happen in the realm of accessible, educational space for people under 40.” And that’s exactly what they did by launching Lishma a few months later.

“The idea is to create something in a space that was too empty,” says Rabbi Helfman, associate rabbi at Holy Blossom, noting how Lishma gives young people across the denominational spectrum the opportunity to engage deeply and authentically on a Jewish level.

READ: RABBI USES BOOZE, TECHNOLOGY TO SPREAD JEWISH THOUGHT

So far, Lishma has completed three six-week-long semesters and has started its fourth. Nearly 100 people have participated, including 28 repeat learners.

Each semester has three different learning tracks, or course options: one focuses on beit midrash-style learning, another fosters in-depth text study and the third is more hands-on, or experiential. Previous courses have run the gamut from Harry Potter and the sacred text (led by Base’s Jenny Isaacs) to voice and mindfulness, run by musicians Aviva Chernick and Aaron Lightstone.

Rabbi Helfman says the goal is to explore topics relevant to young Jewish Canadians. This semester, for instance, there’s a class on starting a conversation between the indigenous and Jewish Canadian communities, led by high school teacher Leah Mauer.

As Mauer developed her course, she learned about what she thought would be the perfect kickoff event: a talk on memoir and storytelling with Holocaust survivor Nate Leipciger and residential school survivor Theodore Fontaine. As fate would have it, the event was scheduled for May 15, the same day Lishma’s fourth semester began.

With no one-size-fits-all formula, as well as no set faculty, the Lishma organizers hope to continue tapping into the expertise in the community to offer a diverse array of courses when the program returns for its second year just before the High Holidays.

For more information on Lishma, visit lishma.ca.