The Torah has seventy countenances, our sages tell us, and there are myriads of unique faces and minds among its learners. Add to this scintillating diversity the fact that Jews will be Jews – each stubbornly insisting on the truth of his own understanding of the Torah. It is, indeed, the right and duty of each to insist on his own interpretation: a Jew’s duty it is to begin learning where his heart desires, in the way that suits him best and expresses most fully the powers contained within his breast.
 

A beis medrash, a Jewish house of study, is a place meant to bring together different minds, to connect people who think and feel differently, along with their respective spiritual needs and yearnings. In a proper beis medrash, disparate individuals fuse together to form a community, in which each cares for his fellow’s spiritual, and sometimes even material needs. But how can one produce a unity from individuals so different from one another? How can a common spiritual denominator be found which unites, but also preserves the uniqueness of each of its members?
 

Such reflections were behind the foundation of Midreshet Ziv, in the spring of 2013, by Rabbi Eliyahu Ilani. His focus was mainly students and artists, from diverse backgrounds, interested in deepening and enriching their Jewish identity, in the innermost meaning of the word. Many who have since joined this community arrive already in possession of a high intellectual level, a rich inner life based on life experiences and brimming with a yearning for spiritual adventures (see some of the personal profiles of the members). If there’s one thing in common among the diverse Torah learners at Ziv, it is their mental maturity, and their desire to continue growing spiritually but with integrity, without having to renounce the complexity of their past and present existence. Complexity makes its own demands: these searchers won’t be satisfied by a Torah that arrives sliced and pre-packaged, limited and uniform. People who have experienced, or who are beginning now to experience, the awakening of their souls towards the search for a relationship with God – such people need the Torah to speak to them, in their own language, straight to their experiences and values. They demand a real, spontaneous meeting, which is both deep and precise, with the true, living Torah. At the same time, of course, they have a burning need to acquire the traditional Torah learning tools, the prerequisite for a Jewish life in which Torah learning plays a central, if not necessarily exclusive, role.
 

Midreshet Ziv’s task is to respond to these needs. The Ziv community accepts with open arms anyone who wants to come learn, with no prejudices against his clothing and style, without trying to constrain his personal, complex life experience. There is one condition, though: A true will to invest in learning, with an open mind to knowledge, whether he is among those who come for a full day’s learning, or just an occasional stolen hour among other pursuits. At Ziv, there is no dogmatic ideological position, no single conception to which everyone must conform. There is only the requirement that everybody strive for the truth, strive to learn, challenge himself and be ready for the confrontation between his old ideas and the new notions he will encounter in the beis medrash.
 

This faith in the unique path each and every person must travel in life finds expression at Ziv also through the warm and personal attention everyone receives. Nobody at Ziv is lost from sight. The devoted staff takes care to set everybody up with a chevrusa, a study partner, or a class, just right for his needs and level. Those who arrive with no prior Talmudic experienced will find mentors glad to patiently help impart the foundations of Talmudic study. People who wish to learn subjects other than Talmud will also find ready study partners. For those with more advanced Talmudic study skills, experienced rabbis and fellow learners at Ziv will be there to help them raise their level even higher. Midreshet Ziv is not a single path – it is a constellation of many paths, moving in parallel, side by side, each at its own pace, according to its own will.
 

The Ziv community regularly goes on field trips together on a regular basis, trips that help improve social cohesion and provide shared bonding social and spiritual experiences. In the passing year we visited the ruins of ghettos and yeshivas in Lithuania, the graves of great Chassidic rebbes in the Ukraine, and explored Tzfat, the Negev, and the Jewish quarter of ancient Jerusalem.
 

Wrapping up a successful beginning phase, Midreshet Ziv is preparing these days for further growth, with the coronation of a newly renovated and expanded edifice in Jerusalem’s Rechavia neighborhood. Our new home will allow more learners to join Midreshet Ziv’s learning experience. For a place of Torah that thrives on constant renewal, a new building is an opportunity: the nature of the community that will be formed in the new building will be fashioned in the image of the members who choose to join and take part in it.  
 

There’s an old joke about the Jew on a desert island, who built himself two synagogues. In that synagogue, he hissed, I will never set foot. Well, Midreshet Ziv is a kind of place about which you just couldn’t say such a thing. Into this beis medrash, everybody can, and everybody is invited to enter. It is a place of Torah proud of its ability to nurture and respond to anyone’s beliefs. All that’s needed is the will to learn, the openness to give and receive.