It is increasingly becoming recognized that if the Torah is to guide the lives of young Jews, it must itself come alive, and be an experience rather than just another objective in an already long day of school and extracurricular activities. This notion is supported by a Dr. Jack Wertheimer’s landmark study, Schools that Work: What We Can Learn from Good Jewish Secondary Schools. According to Wertheimer, successful supplementary Jewish education programs exhibited at least three major characteristics, in addition to several administrative aims: they “develop a community among their students, staff and parents”; emphasize “taking Jewish study seriously” and “engage in experiential learning.”

In truly rabbinic fashion, a new question has emerged to answer the longstanding challenge of Jewish education: Could it be that all three of these goals could be achieved through games — not simply by playing them, but also in designing them?

Rabbi Owen Gottlieb certainly thinks so. A resident faculty member at CLAL and Jim Joseph Fellow at NYU working towards a Ph.D. in Education and Jewish Studies, he founded ConverJent to be an oasis of “Seriously Fun Jewish Games for Learning.” ConverJent provides workshops and training in Torah learning through game design and has organized a new Jewish Games Roundtable, as well as designs digital and offline games for Jewish learners.

(via Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » Torah Games? Bringing Torah to Life Through Game Design)

This item will be making the rounds of game and non-game related media this week. It presents – at first glance – a cognitive dissonance in that a culture, not only of the book, but of the hand-written word, is asking if the making of games can have relevance to the ancient tradition. I chose to snip from Tikkun because I trust its editors and writers to be thoughtful. Please click through to see a video of Rabbi Gottlieb and the rest of the text.