Two-Minute Torah

by Joanne Palmer

November 2007 – Most of today’s college freshmen were in middle school when Apple brought out the first iPod. Listening to whatever they want whenever they want to, through little white buds seemingly grafted to their ears, is entirely natural to them.

Second-generation Sesame Streeters, their attention spans often tend to be short.

Reading the Torah in a yearly cycle and drashing on it is, of course, a much older tradition, and usually involves sitting still in one place for a fairly long time.

Richard Moline, the director of Koach, United Synagogue’s program for college students, has put the two together in Koach’s Two-Minute Torah, a downloadable d’var Torah available on Koach’s website and through iTunes.

“We were looking for ways to continue to be able to keep up with technology and use it to our advantage,” Mr. Moline said. “We have an ezine, Koach on Campus, and other resources available on our website. We also know that every college student has an mp3 player and is constantly downloading things, including podcasts from every imaginable place, so we though why not download Torah?” (Less technologically aware readers might want to know that iPods, like other similar pieces of technology, are mp3 players.)

“The average download is about two minutes, so that’s how long ours is. We hope it will serve as a catalyst that will make people want to learn more.”

Each week, the d’var Torah, which is posted every Monday morning, is given by someone else; so far they’ve been rabbis and other Jewish professionals, including educators; students and laypeople have signed up as well. Mr. Moline hopes to be able to widen the pool from which he draws, and of course all the old Two-Minute Torah clips will continue to be available.

The challenge to the speakers is to bring it in at about two minutes. “It’s a lot harder to do something in two minutes than in 20,” Mr. Moline said. “It really makes the presenter bring the salient points to the forefront immediately.” It demands focus from both the speaker and the listener. “Listeners know that they have only two minutes to catch it,” he said. “When someone speaks for 20 minutes, you have time to zone in and out. You can’t do that here.” And the length is not a gimmick but a bow to reality. “In today’s age of USA Today and headline news and bullet points and sound bites, that’s what people are attuned to.”

Koach is a program for college students, and Two-Minute Torah is aimed at them, but college students are adults and the d’vrai Torah are adult-level. Everyone is invited to listen to them.

There are many ways to get Two-Minute Torah. “The neat thing is that people can sit with their laptops and just listen. They can subscribe through iTunes, or if they have an RSS feed they can subscribe that way too,” Mr. Moline said. “And they can sign up on our website for a weekly reminder.”

He plans on keeping the program going into the foreseeable future. “We probably won’t stop until it becomes old technology,” he said. “But who knows? That could be tomorrow!”

Until then, until the next generation of middle-school kids comes home with something unrecognizable that is infinitely cooler than their parents’ iPod, check out Two-Minute Torah at www.koach.org.