Beit Midrash - DevTech Research Group

DevTech Beit Midrash Initiative: A House of Learning about Formation, Judaism and Innovation

Boston College is a leader in formative education, having a longstanding commitment to educating students as whole persons who can lead lives of meaning and purpose. As stated in the Boston College mission, as a Catholic and Jesuit university, BC “regards the contribution of different religious traditions and value systems as essential to the fullness of its intellectual life and to the continuous development of its distinctive intellectual heritage”. Within this mission, DevTech Beit Midrash builds on the concept of the Jewish Beit Midrash (בית מדרש), a house of learning dedicated to the study of texts. The Hebrew root R-SH-D (דרש) means to seek knowledge, to expound, to derive meaning and interpretation, to demand from the “text”. In the traditional Beit Midrash, students work together to study the first hypertext in history: the Talmud, a 2^nd to 6^th centuries compiled-masterpiece of Jewish literature and law. Similarly, in the DevTech Beit Midrash, participants work with other innovative “texts” such as virtual reality, coding apps, robotics, electronic textiles, maker spaces, and others.

This notion of “text” draws on the discipline of semiotics which describes any system of signs, whether linguistic or non-linguistic, that can be interpreted to convey meaning and to reveal a broader message or cultural understanding. This includes anything from literature to visual images, interactive objects, or even social interactions. Thus, the DevTech Beit Midrash hosts different projects, workshops and symposia to explore how new technologies can help us become more human. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the DevTech Beit Midrash Initiative engages participants in activities that playfully use both natural and artificial languages to learn with and about others, who might be different than us, by promoting a sense of shared human universality through diversity. The DevTech Beit Midrash addresses this and enhances the intellectual life of all members of the university by extending the reach of the concept of formation beyond the Jesuit context and exploring it in a pluralistic environment informed by the Jewish tradition.