A lot of people trying to learn Judaism end up with an accidental curriculum made up of random books, YouTube videos, Reddit threads, and whatever happened to cross their path that week.
The problem isn’t a lack of information. It’s a lack of structure.
If you’ve ever wondered what you should learn first, how to stop feeling overwhelmed, or how to create a more intentional approach to Jewish learning, this guide is for you. Let’s talk about how to build your own Jewish personal curriculum – one that fits your goals, interests, learning style, and real life.
If you’re trying to build a Jewish life without feeling like everything is happening too fast to process, join my mailing list and get the free Jewish Experiences Tracker.
It’s a simple tool to help you record the rituals, learning, holidays, community involvement, and milestones that are shaping your journey. Because sometimes the best way to see how far you’ve come is to stop and notice what’s already happening. It’s also a great resource to share with your rabbi, tutor, or mentor. A book list can show what you’ve studied. The Jewish Experiences Tracker shows how you’re actually engaging with Jewish life.
Transcript below.
Resources mentioned:
- Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean
- A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism
- Six Constant Mitzvos
- Learn to Read Hebrew in 6 Weeks
(Amazon links are affiliate links.)
Transcript:
 A lot of people building a Jewish life from scratch accidentally end up with a curriculum made up entirely of TikTok, Reddit, and panic. If you ever wish someone would just hand you a roadmap for learning Judaism, this video is for you. What if you approached learning Judaism like building your own college education?
Personal curriculums are all the rage on the internet right now. Why not apply it to Jewish life? Most of us, including myself back in the day, approach learning Judaism like drinking from a fire hose. We don’t know what’s important, so we think everything’s important, and we try to do everything at once.
And then you’re just getting hit in the face with the fire hose. Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert, and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, BuildingaJewishLife.com.
And if you’re trying to build a Jewish life without feeling like everything is happening too fast to process, I made a free Jewish Experience Tracker to help you reflect on the moments, rituals, learning, and experiences shaping your journey along the way.
Because Jewish life is built step by step, and sometimes you need help noticing how far you’ve come. It’s also really helpful if you’re working with a rabbi or a tutor because it can help show them what you’re actually doing in your life, much more than just a book list would. So that Jewish Experience Tracker is free, and it’s linked down in the description below.
So Judaism is huge. Do you… Have you ever really stopped to think about how huge Judaism is? It’s thousands of years of history and education, and there are even multiple languages you could learn: Hebrew, Aramaic, Ladino, Yiddish. There’s probably more that I’m not thinking of. There’s holidays, theology, culture, an entire, entire cuisines, Jewish law, politics.
It’s a lot. But most of us are learning randomly, just whatever you come across or can find in the local library. And then you get that one-off suggestion from a friend for a book that you buy on Amazon, and maybe a footnote in that book leads you to another book. You’re trying to survive an information avalanche.
But here’s what’s important: learning Judaism is a lifelong process. You will never learn everything. No one ever learns everything, and honestly, that should feel freeing. There is no perfection here. It’s literally impossible. So you’re okay being imperfect and scattered and a little out of order. You’re not trying to finish Judaism.
You’re building familiarity, rhythm, and grounding. You’re building a practice. So let’s build you a personal curriculum. The first thing I want you to remember is that we’re not just learning this through books. I know you guys, and you love books, but life is more than books. I know. I’m disappointed by that, too.
Believe me, I’m an autistic introvert. All I want to do is read books and not talk to people, but that’s not real life, unfortunately. And I admit, I do like talking to people, It’s just hard. I say this to impress upon you that I know what I’m asking for some of you, and that you’re not gonna like it. I want you to get out in the Jewish community, ideally in person.
Part of your personal curriculum should be going to synagogue, going to a challah bake or other community events, getting to know Jewish people and build Jewish friendships, or at least pleasant Jewish acquaintances. There are lots of classes you could join, probably at your local synagogue or the JCC, uh, the Jewish Community Center, if you have one available to you.
I want you having experiences and conversations, because Judaism is a people, a civilization, a culture. It’s not just a religion. So I want you to do the best you can and get creative. Some of you, that might mean traveling a little bit. I promise you it is well worth your time and gas money, even in this economy.
But I also know that a majority of the people viewing my videos and engaging with my content don’t have access to an in-person Jewish community, at least not within a couple of hours away. I’ve got a video for that that I’ll link up here and down in the description below for what to do when you don’t have a Jewish community.
But I would also caution you to not write things off so quickly. Even pretty small cities do have a Jewish community of some kind. It might be really small, but it’s better than nothing. Now, looking to structuring your personal curriculum. You should want this to be sustainable and something that matches your real life.
We’re not here for perfection because all-or-nothing thinking is gonna have you think, “Well, I can’t learn everything, so I might as well learn nothing.” And that’s not helpful to anyone. Consistency is going to be the key. Something small done consistently is way better than a massive deep dive, and then you don’t touch anything for another three weeks.
There’s probably gonna be a level of anxiety around all this. You wanna get it right. You feel like you’re behind. Maybe you’re comparing yourself to someone you know, or worse, some influencer on the internet. You might even have imposter syndrome, feeling like, “Who am I to be in these Jewish spaces? I’m a faker.”
That’s not true. Jewish spaces are open to all people who want to genuinely connect, you know, without trying to convert us and stuff. We want more people Jewishly knowledgeable in the world, whether you eventually decide to convert or not. Informed, kind people is good for the Jews. So yes, you belong here.
This knowledge is for you, too. So what are you gonna be learning? Let’s talk about materials. Books are the obvious choice. But in addition to what I said about community above, I also want you cooking recipes, listening to the recordings of stories of Holocaust survivors, watching, watching documentaries, watching fictional movies, saying blessings, doing prayers, lighting Shabbat candles.
Doing mitzvot, the commandments, is a core of a Jewish education. And yes, every small act matters. Nothing is too small, and every small act gives you a foundation to build upon, so don’t discount them. All right, let’s finally get to the actual categories of learning. There are lots of different ways you can structure a personal curriculum.
I do encourage you to watch other videos about setting up a personal curriculum. I’m not an expert in that. Also, I find that there are just too many learning styles that I’m not gonna give you one structure because it’s not gonna work for everyone. This should be personalized to you, and you know yourself better than anyone else.
How do you like to learn? What do you like to learn? I just encourage you to be realistic about w- how much you’re actually going to be learning.
I would rather you underestimate and then be like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got, like, another 20 minutes. I could do this for a little while longer,” than for you to be like, “Ugh, I can’t make it another 20 minutes. I really have to stop.”
So whether you make a daily, weekly plan, try to rotate between topics so that you’re getting a well-rounded Jewish education. Probably the most basic topic you should be learning about is Shabbat, holidays, the Jewish calendar. Because Judaism is lived through time, and you can start living Jewish time long before you know everything.
Number two is highly tied to that. That is Jewish practice. And I want you to focus on being practical, not performative. You’re not performing for anyone, not for Joe Schmo on the internet or for G-d. Get down to brass tacks and be practical about it. What does it actually look like, and how do I fit that into my real life?
You could, you could learn about Jewish prayer, the structure of synagogue services, home rituals, k- kosher rules. There’s a lot of topics here. Three, a personal favorite of mine, Jewish history. I’m a history nerd married to a historian. There’s a lot of Jewish history around this house. Jewish behaviors and practices make more sense when you know Jewish history, because people are shaped by history, and we perhaps more than others.
But this is also one of those topics that is drinking from a fire hose. There is just so much Jewish history. I would really encourage you to find a specific time period or a specific topic, and then once you feel comfortable with that section, then consider moving on to a different time period or topic.
And I will tell you that my favorite Jewish history book is Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. I think it’s a great introductory Jewish read for anyone, and it’s so fun. It is such a good book. It’s not long, and it’s easy to read. The other foundational Jewish history book that I would recommend you read is about the history of antisemitism.
It’s called A Convenient Hatred, and I’ll link to both of those books down in the description below. Once you understand the history of antisemitism, it becomes so much easier to see how it shifts and changes over time and with passing, uh, social fads, so that when the next QAnon comes around, you will be equipped to immediately be able to say, “Wow, that’s a blood libel.”
‘Cause it was, in case you haven’t heard that before.
Category four is interesting because I find that it’s either the first place people wanna go or kind of the guilty last place people wanna go, and that’s theology or beliefs.
Because either you are just very spiritually hungry and you’re really comfortable with the language of theology and belief, or you’re someone like me who grew up in an atheist family in the Bible Belt, and honestly, theological language for me growing up was associated with abuse and bullying.
I continue to be extremely uncomfortable with the language of belief and theology and talking about G-d. I just have a lot of baggage there, and my case is extreme, but it’s not that unusual.
A lot of people feel unprepared to speak about spiritual things, mainly because they so doubt their internal experience, which is also something that I’m really good at doing.
For most of my conversion process, I was really worried about converting, ’cause I was like, “I think I believe these things. I’m pretty sure I do, but maybe I’m just tricking myself, and maybe I just want it so much that I’m fooling myself into believing it.” And like, how bonkers is that?
But I have learned over the years that I am very much not alone in that sort of self-distrust about our beliefs and the discomfort of analyzing our beliefs.
And interestingly, this is kind of a hard place to find good resources. I would honestly say a lot of your best resources are blog articles on specific topics.
But one book I will recommend is The Six Constant Mitzvot. And again, that’ll be linked down below.
But this is a topic that feel like I harp on all the time on this channel. The word Israel, one of the names of the Jewish people, means wrestles with G-d. Our relationship with divinity is not intended to be easy. Doubt is normal and acceptable.
As a general rule, at least on paper, Judaism values wrestling with these ideas more than certainty. Your mi- but your mileage may vary in real life with real people, but that’s at least what we believe on paper.
And that’s honestly why it’s so much easier to just not talk to anyone else about belief ideas, because some people are crazy. And you probably know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, hit me up in the comments below. Tell me, “I have never met anyone like that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Okay, topic number five, Jewish diversity. This is the one that’s gonna make people mad in the comments section. I think it is vitally important for every Jew to be educated about all the movements of Judaism and all of the types of Judaism over time.
Judaism is constantly evolving because it’s full of Jews, and Jews are humans. We change.
I think it’s important to understand other Jews and where they’re coming from. So I encourage you to learn the history of the different movements and how their practices and philosophies differ today. I’ll link up here and down below to my video about, uh, the differences between the movements, about conversion, but also going into more of the differences between rituals and b- and philosophies of them, too.
Relatedly, you should also be learning about the diversity of cultures within Judaism. Judaism can be found all over the world. Most of my audience is American, like me, and most of our experience with the Jewish world is the Ashkenazi Eastern European experience. The Jewish world is so much bigger than that, and we should know more about different Jewish cultures.
We should know more about Sephardim, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Indian, Chinese Jews. It’s also really fun to learn about other cultures, especially try cooking some recipes. In America, we like to act like there is some default Jew. That like “the Jew” is a white Ashkenazi person. Admittedly, about 70% of the global Jewish population is Ashkenazi, but that’s a lot less than the 95% that most people seem to assume.
Many of our spaces are Ashkenormative and ignore the experiences of other Jewish cultures, and that’s not right. We should do better than that.
Here’s the topic you’re gonna hate me for: Hebrew. But understand this, you don’t need any form of Hebrew fluency before interacting in Jewish spaces. Walk into any synagogue, and I guarantee a majority of, unless it’s in Israel, a majority of the people will not be able to tell you what most Hebrew words mean.
The longer you’re in the community, you pick up things, like phrases and words here and there. But the majority, certainly in America, the majority of American Jews know no Hebrew. So you’re okay. You’re fine. But let’s be better than fine, okay? At a minimum, I want you to learn how to read Hebrew. And in conversion programs, that is the minimum required.
Even in the Orthodox world, you are not required to actually learn the Hebrew language. You are only required to learn Hebrew reading. Which means what it sounds like, being able to follow along in a prayer book and read the words out loud.
And you don’t even have to be very fast at it. The minimum speed required is actually quite slow. We’re going for accuracy more than speed.
This is a hard subject for a lot of people. Learning languages as an adult is not easy, but it is meaningful. And try to keep that deeper meaning behind what you’re doing in your mind to help it feel a little bit easier to do in the moment. Keep your eye on the prize.
We want small, consistent exposure rather than sitting down for two hours and trying to power through as much as you can fit into your head. That’s a lot more likely to be forgotten than focusing on one letter a day or three letters in a week. There’s no shame in going slowly, even if that means one letter a week.
The best book on the market for this is hands down Learn to Read Hebrew in Six Weeks by Shaffier, I think is how you pronounce it, since that is a kind of generic name and there may be other books that have a similar name. And spoiler alert, you don’t have to do it in six weeks. You can do it in whatever amount of time it takes you.
And the last category, Jewish living. This is where a lot of those community events are gonna come into play. But it’s also learning about things like life cycle events, like birth and mourning and having a child and getting married. It’s also music and recipes, humor, storytelling, plays. There’s a lot here.
Judaism is not only intellectual, it’s also an embodied practice. Connect more of daily life to Jewish practice. Make more of your daily life Jewish.
You do not need to become a Jewish expert overnight in order to begin living a Jewish life. One Shabbat, one ritual, one question at a time, and practice makes progress.
And if you’re trying to figure out what the Jewish conversion process actually looks like from beginning to end without piecing it together from random internet comments, watch my video, The Ultimate Guide to Jewish Conversion, next.
