Rabbi Roundtable: April 15, 2026

In partnership with the Atlanta Rabbinical Association, the AJT’s monthly Rabbi Roundtable brings together rabbis from across Atlanta representing each denomination.

For this month’s discussion, each rabbi was asked the following question:

How should Jewish education respond to increasing ideological diversity within the Jewish community?

Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal

Teach Your Children — And Learn Alongside Them
Judaism has never been afraid of argument. The Talmud enshrines minority opinions not as historical curiosities but as living wisdom. Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed fiercely, yet their disputes were declared machloket l’shem shamayim — sacred controversy pursued for heaven’s sake. We know this. We celebrate it.
But here is what keeps me up at night: our children are learning it, and their parents are not.
Walk into a Jewish day school, a Hebrew school classroom, a Jewish summer camp, or a USY meeting. You will find young Jews being taught to hold complexity, to wrestle with text, to honor disagreement. Jewish education, at its best, is forming a generation fluent in ideological humility.
Meanwhile, many of their parents are retreating — deeper into ideological silos, narrower in their definitions of who counts as a “real” Jew, more certain than ever about Israel, antisemitism, and the boundaries of Jewish community. The gap between what our children are learning and what their families are modeling grows wider every year.
The Torah does not tell us to outsource Jewish formation. V’shinantam l’vanecha — “you shall teach your children diligently” (Deuteronomy 6:7). The verb is second person singular. You. Not the rabbi. Not the Hebrew school teacher. You.
The most urgent response to ideological diversity is not a better curriculum. It is more family education — structured, intentional opportunities for children and their parents, grandparents, and extended family to learn together. When people wrestle with hard Jewish questions alongside people they love, disagreement becomes generative rather than divisive.
Our children are ready to have these conversations. The question is whether we will join them.

Rabbi Steven Rau

There is a well-known saying, “Two Jews, three opinions.” What may sound like a criticism of Jews is actually steeped in our tradition all the way back to Talmudic times. The term, Machloket L’shem Shamayim (or disagreement for the sake of heaven), teaches that constructive conflict can be aimed at discovering truth over winning. Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai’s Talmudic disputes have provided our people not only with understand of halacha (Jewish law) but also have modeled for us a basis for healthy debate towards finding a greater solution.
In the days following Oct. 7, we quickly learned that the Jewish community had a plethora of opinions on Israel’s response in the wake of the largest massacre of the Jewish people since the Shoah. Our teens and college students were confronted with hateful rhetoric and heightened antisemitism in their institutions’ hallways and on their campuses. Whether they were ardent Zionists deeply connected to their Judaism or they were questioning their own Jewish identities and connections to Israel, they were left on an island to fend for themselves not having been exposed to multiple perspectives in their Jewish education. As educators, we realized that we had failed our students by teaching Israel in a one-sided approach. Learning that their classmates understood Modern Israel’s founding from a completely different perspective caused many to question their beliefs and the teachers who taught them.
Despite our own feelings for Israel, we owe it to our teenagers to teach them the complexities of Israel and differing points of view so that they, too, can form their own opinions and connections to our homeland. For centuries, our people have used Machloket L’shem Shamayim to create greater understanding so long as there is a focus on truth, respectful dialog, and embracing multiple and often conflicting perspectives. So too, in our own ideological disagreements, we should work to maintain loving relationships with family members, friends, peers, and neighbors through our disagreements and perhaps even gain new perspectives and understandings for the sake of heaven.

Rabbi Menachem Wineberg

We refer to the Torah as Torat Emet — the Torah of Truth. The word, emet, is formed from the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, conveying that its truth is not momentary, but enduring — true across all times and in every age.
What this means for us in our quest to make Torah and Jewish education relevant in the modern age is not that we must look outside of Torah to supply new perspectives, but that we must learn how to uncover them within it.
We live in a world rich with new language, new frameworks, and new ways of understanding the human experience. These perspectives often feel novel and compelling. Yet, rather than seeing them as additions to Torah, they can be understood as expressions of ideas that Torah has always contained.
Modern psychology and science, for example, have given us powerful tools to understand behavior, growth, and wellbeing. What I have found is that the more one studies Torah, the more one recognizes these very ideas embedded within its teachings — sometimes in different language, but with striking depth and clarity.
The task of Jewish education, then, is not to graft external ideas onto Torah, but to reveal the richness already present within it.
If we can show our children that the ideas they are passionate about are already rooted in Torah, we give them a Judaism that is not only practiced, but deeply relevant and alive.

Rabbi Chaim Neiditch

At a time when the Jewish community is experiencing increasing ideological diversity, the question is not whether Jewish education should respond, but how.
The answer begins with a simple truth: education only works when students are engaged. If students are not inspired, if what they are learning does not feel alive and relevant, even the most thoughtful messages will fall flat.
Today’s Jewish students are bright, curious, and exposed to a world of competing ideas. They are not satisfied with surface-level answers, they are searching for depth and meaning. That places a profound responsibility on educators.
First and foremost, educators must engage. Jewish education cannot feel like an obligation or a relic of the past. It must feel alive, sparking curiosity, inviting participation, and creating real connection. When students walk into a classroom or program, they should feel that something meaningful is happening.
This requires more than technique. It requires passion. When educators are energized by Judaism, its wisdom, values, and depth, that energy is contagious.
Judaism must be brought to life. It cannot remain abstract. It must be lived, through Shabbat meals, meaningful conversations, acts of kindness, leadership, authentic friendships, and helping teens develop a real personal relationship with G-d. That is where identity is formed.
At the same time, we must refocus on the essentials. Students need a strong foundation in our values, texts, history, and peoplehood. Our ideology should emerge from Torah, not the other way around. With that grounding, differences become more thoughtful and constructive.
Our role is not to tell students what to think, but to help them find their voice within Judaism, with Judaism as their guide and foundation.
The goal is not to eliminate diversity of thought. Debate has always been part of our tradition. The goal is to develop knowledgeable, passionate Jews who understand what they believe and engage respectfully with others.
If we focus on engagement, meaning, and essentials, ideological diversity will not weaken Jewish identity.
It will strengthen it.

About the Rabbis:

Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal, Conservative
Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal is the senior rabbi at Ahavath Achim Synagogue. Rabbi Rosenthal grew up in Los Angeles, graduating from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, eventually earning a Master of Arts degree in Hebrew Letters and Rabbinic Ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in May 2008 – after which he joined Ahavath Achim as an associate rabbi. In addition to his duties as senior rabbi, he also served as the president of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association (2019–2021) and is currently Board Chair for Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, inspiring faith-based organizations to take up the cause of environmental stewardship and justice.

Rabbi Steven Rau, Reform
Rabbi Steven H. Rau joined The Temple staff as Director of Lifelong Learning in 2002. He oversees The Temple’s Breman Education Center, Project Connect (youth engagement department), Tamid: A Lifetime of Jewish Learning (adult education), and the Weinberg Early Learning Center. Rabbi Rau is actively involved in the greater Jewish educational and rabbinic world, having served nationally as vice president of Varied Rabbinates of the Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and on the board of the Association of Reform Jewish Educators. Rabbi Rau is co-author of, “Everyone is Welcome: Creating a Culture of Inclusion in Congregational Schools,” published by URJ Press, and “What’s Mine is Yours: Jewish Learning for Adults of Diverse Abilities,” published by the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning.

Rabbi Menachem Wineberg, Chabad
Rabbi Mendy Wineberg directs Chabad of Dunwoody together with his wife, Sara. Originally from South Africa, Rabbi Wineberg studied in various parts of the U.S., eventually moving to New York where he received his rabbinic ordination. Answering the call of the Lubavitcher Rebbe to bring the light of Judaism to every corner of the globe, the Winebergs established Chabad of Dunwoody in 2022.

Rabbi Chaim Neiditch, Orthodox
Rabbi Chaim Neiditch is the Executive Director and founder of the Jewish Student Union of Atlanta and is in his 30th year working with Jewish teens across the greater Atlanta area. He previously ran Atlanta’s Jewish Teen Center, served as regional director for NCSY Southern Region and Atlanta Region, and served on the Presidential Advisory Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. He is the winner of the Marcus Foundation and Jewish Federation’s, “Shark Tank.” He has been named to Atlanta Jewish Times’ 40 Under 40, founded the JSU GO Israel Adventure program for Jewish high school students, and recently testified in front of the Georgia Senate to help pass GA HB-30, the state’s first Antisemitism Hate Crime Bill.