This rabbi carries on the Jewish tradition of writing Hebrew letters creatively

• Author: SHIRA HANAU/JTA
• Published date: 11 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

But Meyer, a Jewish educator in the Pittsburgh area, didn't use the margins of a notebook as her canvas. Instead, she started drawing around Hebrew letters, using brightly colored markers to hug the contours of the aleph-bet, the Hebrew alphabet, sometimes making detours to doodle images related to each letter. Then she started posting them on Facebook as Doodly Jew.

In the process, she realized that the doodling process could be a tool to teach Hebrew words, Jewish prayers and the names of the weekly Torah portion.

"This is not art that you can hang up in a museum, right? These are really doodles," Meyer said. But she stressed that art doesn't have to be professionally produced to be worthwhile, saying, "There's actually a cognitive benefit to drawing shapes and images to represent words."

Over time, Meyer began collaborating with other Jewish educators to produce more involved videos, still based on her drawings. In addition, Jewish educators across the country have used Meyer's videos to teach vocabulary — a boon at a time when many Hebrew schools have remained virtual and teachers are contending with challenges engaging students.

"That for me is definitely the most rewarding element of this, finding a way to reach into the screen of the students and help them engage," Meyer said.

We spoke to Meyer about how she became Doodly Jew, the historical tradition that inspires her and how she hopes Hebrew education can evolve. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

JTA: How did you come up with the idea of doodling as a way to teach Hebrew?

I've been a teacher for a long time and I am a rabbi. It's hard to find ways to engage students. Teachers are always doing amazing work, and in the pandemic had to step up and figure out how to do their amazing work in a mostly digital realm. So I wanted to help create something to make it easier for teachers to engage students online. I thought about ways to simply, quickly, show something interesting about Hebrew. I know it's really hard to teach a second language or a heritage language online.

But actually doodling around the letters of the aleph bet is age-old — it's part of Jewish tradition to have illuminated manuscripts.

Tell me more about how you see Doodly Jew as connected to historical examples of art related to the aleph bet.

Art has been a part of Judaism for as long as we understand, and creativity is really valuable in seeing shapes and letters in the aleph bet.

In the story of all the...