Becoming 10% more Jewish in Calgary

How Calgary Chabad’s Rosh Chodesh Society chapter is making Torah learning accessible, relevant and meaningful for Calgary women

by Jana Zalmanowitz 

I may have recently been persuaded to attend a Torah-learning class by the promise of soup.

On a trip to Israel last year, a guide challenged members of my group to become 10% more Jewish when we returned home. Challenge accepted. I had grown up attending Hebrew school, but beyond that, I hadn’t consciously sought out Torah learning. So when a friend told me about Chabad’s Lift Your Life course, I was intrigued.

The topic sounded suspiciously like my line up of favourite self-improvement podcasts, with a Jewish twist. An invitation to examine every day aspects of life like sleep, emotions, food, speech, faith, and your own potential. As a human being, I’m familiar with all of those, and they could all be better, right?

Lift Your Life is part of the Rosh Chodesh Society (RCS), an initiative of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute designed to make Torah study inspiring, appealing and accessible to women. Chabad Lubavitch of Alberta describes itself as “a center for Jewish discovery where open-minded exploration is the key, not background or affiliation.”

That invitation to explore was exactly what I needed.

What I didn’t expect was how much of the experience would have to do with the woman leading it. For nearly four decades, Rebbetzin Rochel Matusof has organized programs and educational opportunities through Chabad of Alberta. The Calgary RCS chapter grew out of her long-standing interest in creating spaces where women could talk, learn and connect through a Jewish lens.

She started by inviting women to gather during services on Saturday mornings during the Torah reading to discuss Jewish topics. “We would talk about the Parsha, or talk about current events, everything through the Torah’s perspective,” she explains.

The gatherings typically attracted 20 to 30 women. Some enjoyed the conversations so much that they went straight for the discussion, maybe even bypassing the regular davening.

When the pandemic ended those in-person gatherings, Matusof moved the group online, where similar numbers continued to participate. But she wanted to recreate the feeling of learning together in the same physical space.

When registration opened for the 5786 (Hebrew calendar) Rosh Chodesh Society course, she expected perhaps 25 women. But more than 100 signed up.

“They wanted to learn,” she realized.

The response was particularly striking given the size of Calgary’s Jewish community. Matusof says the Calgary chapter is larger than many other RCS chapters in Canada. What was the magic ingredient?

She wanted the program to be accessible to women with busy lives. Each Lift Your Life session was offered twice, once in the evening and once on Sunday afternoon, with make-up classes available so participants could catch anything they missed.

There was also the food. Depending on when you attended, there might be a soup bar or a light breakfast. When I arrived, I found tables carefully set with purple runners, course materials, sparkly tzedakah boxes and little touches that made the room feel more like an occasion than a class.

“I wanted it to look nice,” Matusof explains. “I wanted it to be for body and soul.”

She added small gifts connected to each topic. We found lavender sachets for better sleep, pens with encouraging sayings for happiness and colourful laminated blessing cards for food.

Upon entering, I felt the room announce: somebody cares for you. I let that sensation wash over me while I listened and thought, uninterrupted, for an hour and a half.

The course materials themselves are created by the Jewish Learning Institute. But Matusof brings them to life with her signature enthusiasm.

“I love to learn,” she says, describing how she grew up among generations of rabbis and turned to Jewish texts such as Rambam for knowledge even as a child.

That enthusiasm is evident during the sessions. She often seems to be encountering the material with the same curiosity as the women sitting around the tables. And in a way, she is.

“I can read the same story from the Torah and it’s different at every age,” she says. “I see it from a different angle, I appreciate it more, and can apply it differently to my life.”

Looking around the room, it was clear that there was no single type of woman who had come to learn. Matusof confirms the participants ranged widely in age and background, including non-Jewish women interested in learning about Jewish teachings.

For some, the course offered practical tools for everyday life. Liz, a university student, said, “These lessons taught me to reflect, learn and grow in so many different aspects of my life.”

For others, it offered belonging. “The course came at such an important time for me when I was needing spiritual connection and community,” says Marina, another participant.

Apparently, the learning was compelling enough to overcome busy schedules and competing demands. Carmela puts it more simply, “I don’t persevere unless it keeps me glued and it did.”

There is no shortage of Jewish learning available online. There are courses, TED Talks and writings by Jewish scholars. But none of those can quite recreate the experience of sitting around an adorned table with other women, eating soup, asking questions and listening to someone who is genuinely excited about what she is teaching. It was a combination of magic ingredients.

Each session had me thinking how things I do each day were grounded in beautiful, meaningful aspects of Judaism. If getting a good night’s sleep made me 10% more Jewish, I could get behind that. If finding opportunities in frustration made me 10% more Jewish, let’s get to work.

This fall, the Rosh Chodesh Society will begin its next course, Next Genesis, which examines the stories of the first book of the Torah. Its description makes a compelling promise: “These stories do not describe the first human beings. They describe the human being.”

It sounds like the kind of Torah learning that might fit neatly in my podcast playlist and keep me contemplating a life of meaning. Rebbetzin Matusof agrees. “Life is so precious,” she says, “and whatever we do should have a meaning.”

I signed up for Lift Your Life looking for a way to become 10% more Jewish. I found that along with some added bonuses: connection, community, wisdom, a monthly hour and a half of peace and quiet, and as promised, a bowl of hot soup.

For more information on Next Genesis and the Rosh Chodesh Society, visit  Chabadalberta.org/Circle or contact info@chabadalberta.org.

Jana Zalmanowitz is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter