Jewish learning Reflections on Learning With the Hadran
By Sarah Pollack
There’s a Jewish tradition that teaches whenever we complete a section of studying, we should recite the following formula, called The Hadran: It starts with hadrach alan, “We have returned to you and we will return to you, dear learning….”
The Hadran points to the assumption that we can never really be done with something. As soon as we close the last page of the book, we make a dedication to start again, to return and to have the book return to us. Every ending is just a transition to a new phase.
[From Hebrew College rabbinical student Sarah Pollack’s JewishBoston.com piece “Reflections on Learning With the Hadran” which was published on May 19, 2023.]