For the last month I’ve had the extraordinary good fortune to be in Scotland studying at a Beit Midrash. Azara UK opened the first nondenominational yeshiva in Europe on the 21st of June and I was part of the first cohort of students learning Gemara, Torah, Halakhah, Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, along with numerous other classes including Jewish philosophy and ethics in New College, Edinburgh. 
Beit Midrash in Rainy Hall, New College, School of Theology, University of Edinburgh
Azara, which is Hebrew for courtyard, was the space in front of the Temple in which all Jews could gather, regardless of gender or priestly status. Azara says, “We aim to be a space where Jews of all denominations, backgrounds, and genders can gather to learn and to make religious meaning.” It was joyous, rigorous, challenging, and empowering.
In just a month I went from being unsure as to how that layout on the page worked to being able to read the text – in Aramaic. I’ve never learned Gemara before but thanks to superb teachers – Dr Laliv Clenman and Azara co-founder Jessica Spencer – my skills have really taken a leap up and forward.
I had a great chavruta partner and every morning we worked our way through the third perek of Kiddushin, negotiated the oddities of the Jastrow and the Frank, and discussed and debated the ideas and threads of thought moving vertically and horizontally through the text. I loved it. 
Gemara open to Kiddushin
Doing the Daf Yomi for the past three years really helped me get into the rhythm of daily study and sometimes it offers timely pearls of wisdom; on the second day of classes I read this in the Daf (Gittin 43A): Rav Huna: “A person does not understand statements of Torah unless he (sic) stumbles in them.” I stumbled quite a lot – why, oh, why, is the Jastrow so badly printed? – but it really made me want more, so I’m off to Queer Yeshiva at the end of August.
There were a host of other classes on offer and my only regret was that I couldn’t take them all. I did do two weeks of Biblical Hebrew with Rabbi Rachel Montagu, two weeks of Aramaic with Dr Laliv Clenman and Rabba Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, along with Torah of Torah with Rabbi Daniel Lichman and Stepping Out: Martin Buber and the Implications of Judaism’s Sacred Anarchism with Rabbi Dr Judith Rosen-Berry.
Twice a week we had a community Beit Midrash with the Edinburgh Jewish community; there were lectures from the teachers as well as the students, and we celebrated shabbat with either the (orthodox) Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation or Sukkat Shalom, the Edinburgh Liberal congregation. Both congregations made us all feel welcome and Rabbi Rose of the EHC, really went out of his way to make us feel safe and welcome. And he introduced us to the whiskey course as part of the shabbat meals. It’s a tradition that I’ll be adopting.
I had an extraordinary time; it was full of learning, discussing, contemplating, arguing, and sheer, joyous Jewish thought, prayer, song, and community. I hope, Baruch HaShem, that I can be part of the 2024 cohort and I’ll dance through the streets of Edinburgh with a Torah scroll again. 
Lior dancing the Torah Scroll through Edinburgh to welcome it to the Beit Midrash