Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer הרב יוסף גבריאל בקהופר
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Monday, May 18, 2026
Students (Well, All of Us) Should Really Be Writing, Not Typing
A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.
Her name is Audrey van der Meer.
She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.
The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.
Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.
Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.
When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.
The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.
When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.
Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.
Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.
The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.
Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.
Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.
Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.
Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.
Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.
A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.
The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.
The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.
The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.
That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.
Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.
Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.
Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.
You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.
The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.
Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
The Differences Between the Two Sets of Luchot In Terms of Learning Torah and Retaining It
Focusing on the Gemara in Eruvin 54a.
Learning and mastering Torah would have been different had we stayed with the first Luchos. And why our current way is "better".
L'fum tzara agra, middos and more.
A remote shiur given via Zoom to the Jewish communities in Uganda.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Rischa D'Araisa Season 13 Episode 4: Announcing the Rischa D'Araisa Prizes For Literature and More!
Rischa D'Araisa Season 13 Episode 4:
Announcing the Rischa D'Araisa Prizes
For Literature and More!
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Can I Host Someone Who is Not Observant for a Meal on Yom Tov?
Can I Host Someone Who is Not Observant for a Meal on Yom Tov?
(And What If He Touches the Wine?)
A recording for the BHP daily Halachic Whatsapp group https://chat.whatsapp.com/Gz8rrxqRcfy9rMOXRLG6GS
Tuesday, May 05, 2026
Torah Im Derech Eretz Group Core Principles and Invitation to Join Our WhatsApp Group
This is the current formulation of the core principles of the
Torah Im Derech Eretz Movement and Institute
Follow this link to join our WhatsApp group:
We have a nascent blog at:
and are working on a website.
Join us in expanding the reach of TIDE!
Core Principles:
1. Torah Im Derech Eretz: A holistic approach to Yahadus includes and encourages the inclusion of secular branches of knowledge and the pursuit of other interests in a Torah framework to enhance the wisdom, character and accomplishments of individual Jews and of Jewish society.
2. Mensch-Yisroel: Individual Jews and Jewish society are meant to be good, refined and holy not only to be mekaddesh Shem Shomayim, but as the intrinsic characteristics of the Am Hashem.
3. Austritt: Torah Im Derech Eretz requires sharp definitions of what is within its compass and what is beyond its compass. Collaboration with entities beyond the scope of Torah-true values is unacceptable.
4. Eretz Yisroel: The Land of Israel is an essential component of the Jewish people’s mission on Earth, but not via nationalistic, militaristic or xenophobic modalities.
5. Torah Lishmah: Talmud Torah is of paramount importance because it guides us in knowing what to do in this world, individually and collectively. This purposeful learning of Torah is of greater significance than Torah learned for its own sake.
6. Women: The role of women in Judaism is of critical importance and as much a priority as the role of men.
7. Non-Jews: All human beings are to be treated with the dignity, respect and compassion that are due to a Tzelem Elokim.
Monday, May 04, 2026
Rischa D'Araisa Season 13 Episode 3: Rabbanim Lecturing and Teaching Women: The Difficulty of a Halachic Standard
Rischa D'Araisa Season 13 Episode 3:
Rabbanim Lecturing and Teaching Women:
The Difficulty of a Halachic Standard
Sunday, May 03, 2026
Shavuos as Our Anniversary with Hashem, as the Holiday of Yitzchok Avinu & as the Holiday of Gerim
Meeting Purpose
To explore the spiritual meaning and customs of Shavuot.
Key Takeaways
Topics
The Torah's Silence on Shavuot
Shavuot & the Patriarch Yitzchak
Fulfilling Shavuot: Introspection & Rededication
See also:
Shavuos as an Anniversary and a Time for Introspection
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)