For the sin we have committed...

Like most  of my colleagues, the past month has been way to busy with getting ready for the new school year and High Holy Days to indulge in things like blogging. Then Michael Felberbaum, one of my former students (who also was a wonderful madrikh and later a teacher in our school for several years) came up to me on Yom Kippur afternoon to tell me he enjoys my blog but there has not been much to read lately. It gave me a lift in the midst of a long day of prayer, teaching and fasting. Still busy, but not too busy to Share Daniel Gordis' latest blog post from the Jerusalem post. A link to the original and his comments page are at the end. As usual, he nails it! 

See you in the sukkah!

Ira

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For the sin we have committed by imagining that Jewish life as we know it could survive without a Jewish state, and for the sin we have committed by being certain that it could not.

For the sin we have committed in believing that every problem has a solution, and for the sin we have committed in failing to try harder to find solutions no matter how elusive.

For the sin we have committed in not loving the Jewish state with sufficient passion, and for the sin we have committed in not being sufficiently ashamed of its shortcomings.

For the sin we have committed in electing consecutive leaders who fail to communicate even a semblance of a vision of how Israel should be both Jewish and democratic, and for the sin we have committed in silencing or ignoring the few brave souls who have sought to share with us their own visions of what a Jewish state can and should be.

For the sin we have committed in believing that only an Israel at peace is worthy of our pride, and for the sin we have committed in failing to engender any semblance of a national conversation about what sort of peace has any genuine chance of taking root.

For the sin we have committed by failing to acknowledge the horrid costs that keeping ourselves safe often exacts from those living under us, and for the sin we have committed by failing to see the costs it exacts from our own children, no less.

For the sin we have committed in failing to recognize our own obligation to speak out in Israel's defense, and for the sin we have committed in allowing that defense to become mean-spirited and hurtful.

For the sin we have committed by forgetting that it is mostly thanks to secular Jews that we built and still have a state, and for the sin we have committed by ignoring the fact that, too often, those same Jews are struggling to pass on to their children a passionate commitment to Israel's future.

For the sin we committed in taking pride in Israel's social and economic equality protests without actually joining them on the streets, and for the sin we have committed by failing to honestly admit there was little Jewish content to those protests and that many of its leaders now live abroad.

For the sin we have committed by failing to work harder to stop Jewish violence against non-Jews in our midst, and for the sin we have committed by failing to remember that among the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are some of the most decent human beings and passionate Zionists anywhere.

For the sin we have committed by pretending that there's anything innately Jewish about semiconductors, and for the sin we have all committed, wherever we live, by creating one of the most Jewishly illiterate generations of young people that our people has ever known.

For the sin we have committed by teaching our young people that a life lived in conversation with only Jewish sources is sufficient, and for the sin we have committed by teaching others that they could fashion meaningful Jewish lives without that conversation.

For the sin we have committed in electing as Israel's religious leaders men who are not Zionists, who have virtually no secular education and whose vision of Judaism speaks to almost no one in the Jewish state, and for the sin we have committed in picking precisely the wrong places to try to break that monopoly.

For the sin we have committed in creating a state out of the ashes of the Holocaust while allowing its survivors to languish in abject poverty, and for the sin we have committed in letting our state, a haven for those with nowhere else to go, become a haven for those who traffic in powerless women.

For the sin we have committed by the folly of far too porous borders, and for the sin we have committed in our treatment of those to whom we've allowed entry.

For the sin we have committed in refusing to hear the most powerful Jewish critiques of what Israel has become, and for the sin we have committed in denying that it is our enemies' self-destructive and hate-driven choices that consign them to the lives they live.

For the sin we have committed in belittling the Jewish or moral seriousness of those who have crafted Jewish lives different from our own, and for the sin we have committed in pretending that Jewish life without profound Jewish knowledge and a deep-seated sense of obligation pulsing through its core can prevail.

For the sin we have committed by not bewailing the moral corruption too prevalent in our society, and for the sin we have committed by not taking sufficient pride in Israel's deep-seated and abiding decency.

For the sin we have committed in not seeing the redemption of the Jewish people that is unfolding in the Jewish state, and for the sin we have committed by forgetting that we've only just begun.

For these, and for many more, may we find forgiveness, and may we grant forgiveness.

Grant us the capacity for unbounded pride coupled with the embrace of self-critique, satisfaction in what we've wrought coupled with a drive to do even better. And this year, in this time of uncertainty, in this region newly ablaze, enable us to keep what was always the primary promise that Zionism made to the Jewish people: Help us keep ourselves, and especially our children, safe.

Gmar chatima tovah.


The original Jerusalem post column can be read here.

Comments and reactions can be posted here. 

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Waiting for Superman: New CAJE, Old Battle

Another great piece from eJewishPhilantrhopy! Sadly NewCAJE comes when I serve at Eisner Camp, so I was not able to be there. Sounds like it was excellent. I truly appreciate and agree with David Steiner's conclusion, and would have loved to have been in the room! Thoughts?

--Ira

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by David Steiner

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving … conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.

John Dewey

The highlight of NewCAJE #4 held at Nichols College, just west of Boston, was not the exemplary learning or rich celebrations of Jewish culture. It was the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the debate about the nature of Jewish education for the 21st century, which was set up like the famous heavyweight championship fight between Mohammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire and played out like the battle of the Mitnagdim and the Hassidim.

Dr. David Bryfman

In one corner, there was Dr. David Bryfman, Director of the New Center for Collaborative Leadership at the Jewish Education Project in New York, and, in the other was Rabbi Danny Lehmann, President of Hebrew College of Boston. The room was packed, the stakes were high and, in place of a referee, Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox moderated. There were no KO’s, but the crowd, passing judgment with the SMS app on their smart phones, gave a lean victory to Dr. Bryfman with the cellular poll asking which speaker would be most accepted by the audience member’s congregation or school board.

Rabbi Danny Lehmann

What were the stakes? The debate was set up to address the future of Jewish education. How important is Jewish literacy to the 21st century learner? What is the importance of Judaic text-based education in experiential learning? What is the importance of recreation (a sense of fun and belonging) in a Jewish education context? These were the questions, and if you removed references to the 21st century and experiential education, you might just think you were transported back to the era of apostasy following the false messiahs of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Standing in for the Hasidim was Dr. Bryfman, a new Baal Shem Tov, hoping to convince the crowd that the individual experience of a child, at the center of Jewish education, is best served with “positive Jewish experiences,” while his opponent, the Mitnaged, standing in for the Gra, Rabbi Danny Lehmann took the position that positive experiences are not a substitute for engagement with Jewish texts, which is at the center of Judaism.

To help decide whose vision of Jewish education is more appropriate for the 21st century, this writer turns back to the first century of the Common Era when a similar battle was being waged. In preparation for the Jewish people’s departure from their home turf in Roman occupied Palestine, Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva argued the question: “Which is greater, education or action?” Tarfon insisted on experience, while Akiva defended learning. In the end, the rest of the rabbis settled the dispute by saying: “Education is greater because it leads to [proper] action.” Notice that education comes first, and, more importantly, not all action is proper.

In making his case, Dr. Bryfman delivered a body blow with an anecdote. He told the story of a woman who remembered the food she ate to break her fast on Tisha B’Av over two decades earlier at a Jewish summer camp. His point, we remember and identify with the world we experience. But Rabbi Lehmann, the southpaw, came back with an upper cut by lamenting the lack of substance and asking what is the benefit of an identity which is hallow? He asked why should we remain Jewish if it doesn’t stand for anything. Essentially, he was saying that there are many identities out there, and educators help to define Jewishness so young Jews will choose our identity.

Experiential education, John Dewey’s brainchild, was the centerpiece of the New CAJE debate, but there was a distinctly non-Dewey feeling in the air. Experience was being touted by Dr. Bryfman as a panacea for the ills of a religious school system that was failing our youth, while Rabbi Lehmann sounded like the naysayers of Progressive education. Both thought their educational philosophy is a natural outgrowth of Dewey, who would respond to them,

“[A]ny movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.” 

It reminds me of the joke about the two scholars fighting over the true meaning of the Rambam.

“My Monides is right.”

“No, My Monides.”

Remaining loyal to Dewey, we can say that, “There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract.” Kal v’chomer, if this is so, then how can there be a panacea.

In my session, Exposing the Gorilla’s in the Complimentary School Classroom (and thinking about what to feed them), a group of religious school directors introduced themselves by telling each other where they are from and the particular challenges of their schools. We looked at this question through the lens’s of geography, demography and finance. What we discovered was just how complicated our situation is.

The problems of Jewish education are numerous but not uniform. (Repeat 3x) Like the seventy faces of Torah, each educator faces different challenges. Some of us are in big cities with large Jewish populations. In these cities, day school becomes an option, most often, when the public school system is failing. The consequence tends to be two forms of day schools; Jewish day schools and private schools for Jews. In all densely populated Jewish communities, the synagogue doesn’t need to be the center of Jewish life and bagels at the local deli may satisfy families’ needs for Jewish community and ritual.

In small towns, isolation from highly trained teachers can be a major obstacle. One participant in my session told me about the positive role the Institute for Southern Jewish Life has in supporting these schools. Many are limited by finance. They can’t afford professional development for their teachers, and some even need to draft unpaid teacher volunteers. ISJL supports these schools through conferences, teacher mentorships and ongoing support.

I could go on about the challenges of the various religious schools, but my goal is not to make lists. I want to direct the reader’s attention to the fact that discussions about the nature of religious pedagogy, whether it is experiential or more like a traditional beit midrash, mislead us into believing that we can find uber remedies. In American public education, this is called “Waiting for Superman.” It doesn’t work.

For millennia, Jewish communities have been led by the mara d’atra, usually rabbis, but essentially the “teacher of the place” whose charge it is to serve as a facilitator of Jewish knowledge and practice. Left to it’s own devices, this system wouldn’t work because the communities would eventually become so disparate in there beliefs that they would not find a common core.

This is why they chose a big Jewish library of content to stand at the center of the curriculum. Each mara d’atra would have his favorite books and ways of teaching and expertise, but they would all emanate from a common set of constantly developing knowledge, an oral Torah. Left alone, this wouldn’t work either because some communities allowed their Torah to include false messiahs and unaccepted revelations.

This is when the librarians came in and said, as I learned from my teacher Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, there need to be some borders for Judaism. This is where our system of checks and balances comes to play. We are pluralistic because we want the entire family at the table. It also teaches us to be humble and not assume that we have the monopoly on what’s right. We are tolerant because we stand for something, which means that not everything goes, i.e. we cannot have people at our table that will not sit with everyone at the table.

And we allow some deviance because the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go askew, and we have to address issues that we never thought would come up, like we do in conducting wars against terror or finding ways to accept the sexuality of all our family members.

Rabbi Lehmann is right that we have to look to our own library and grind our teeth in pursuit of these answers, and Dr. Bryfman is right in our need to create laboratories, a term I borrow from Dewey, where Jewish students can have Jewish experiences that make them want to be members of the tribe, and both of them are wrong if they think that theirs should be the dominant paradigm of our religious schools.

In Hebrew, we have three letter roots for our words, and often they become the source of a system of binary thinking that can be wonderful and terrible in the same moment. The root, shin, chet, reish, can create the word shachar, dawn, the beginning of light, and shachor, black, the absence of light. This gives us a spectrum on which to find ourselves. The same can be said for pey, shin, tet, which can create pshat, the simple or literary meaning, or moofshat, abstraction. Again, a binary. It’s the same idea that Bialik wanted us to learn in his brilliant essay, Aggadah and Halacha, Legend and Law. Each is the side of a coin. They cannot exist without the other. Think heaven and Earth, water and land, the workweek and Shabbat.

There are, however, other paradigms in Judaism. Seventy faces of Torah is a three dimensional paradigm. It recognizes the limitations of spectrums of thought. Seventy faces of Torah is why we need more organizations like New CAJE because Jewish educators need to come together and discuss our challenges and constantly brainstorm their solutions and share what works and what doesn’t. This is why I went to New CAJE, not for the heavyweights and their rumbles, not to make choices between mitnagdim and Hassidim, but to be in the company of my peers and colleagues and to face the challenges of the 21st century without waiting for Superman.

David J. Steiner, Ed.D. is working to complete his rabbinic ordination. He has been a congregational director of education for both the Reform and Conservative synagogues, and he recently returned to America from a fellowship at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

What is this thing we call fear?

My friend Richard

One of my dearest friends is Richard Walden. Rich is a member of our congregation and has served on the board for several years. Before that he and his wife both taught Hebrew on Sunday mornings (Susan is coming back to the faculty this year!) He studied the classics and ended up becoming a banker. But every Friday, he boards an early afternoon train from New York to be back in time for our 6:00 p.m. Shabbat service. He is back in the morning for our 8:00 a.m. service. He is generous and an all around mensch. I am biased, but I dare you to find someone to disagree! 

Several times a year, he volunteers to read Torah at our service when there is not a 14 year old reprising their Bar or Bat Mitzvah parshah. And when he reads, Rich also likes to give the D'var Torah. This past Shabbat was one of those days. Rich nailed the chanting - he is not a musician but he has a deep resonant voice that brings the emotion of the text right off the page and into your kishkes. And here is his D'var Torah. I felt the need to share. Yasher koach Richard!

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What is this thing we call fear? It is an incredibly complex emotion that is woven into Torah in many ways and has been with us from Eden right on through our 40 years of wandering. So what is fear? Is it lack of courage? Is it all about rational or irrational phobias?

This week is parashat Devarim, the opening of Deuteronomy, the book in which Moses retells our journey. In this section Moses recalls the spies who are sent to check out the land promised to us by God. As luck would have it, I met them just a few weeks ago when I stood in as Rabbi for the Friday night service at parashat Shlach. Well, I am with the spies once more and we are getting ready to cross the Jordan. Once again we go out and once again we learn that the land is indeed flowing with milk and honey. Oh but we silly, silly spies. We never learn, and we return, still filled with fear about the giants who live there.

Once again God is angry with us, and sure enough, God punishes us for not trusting—40 years of wandering in the desert AND no one but Joshua will enter the promised land.

So, what is FEAR in Torah? After eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve hide their nakedness from God in fear (Gen 3:10). God tells Abraham to “fear not” when he is sent on his journey in Lech Lecha (Gen: 15:1). At the shores of the Red Sea we are told not to fear Pharaoh’s army (Ex 14:13) and endlessly elsewhere it seems we are told to have no fear.

Does God want us to have the ability to look physical or emotional stress in the eye and say, ‘no big deal, I can take it’? We are tough, we don’t fear anything? We are told in this week’s portion that the spies Moses sent to reconnoiter the promised land “have taken the heart out of us, saying ‘we saw there a people stronger and taller…large cities with walls sky-high.” (Deut. 1:28). Is that what fear is, lack of courage in the physical world?

Well wait one minute. That can’t quite be it. Throughout Torah we are absolutely told to fear God. Later on in Deuteronomy we get the classic turn of the Ve’ahavta to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and all your might”—but FEAR “lest the anger of the Lord your God blaze forth” (Deut. 6:4). We were told directly in Leviticus “you shall fear your God: I am the Lord” (Lev 19:14). It would seem that just as many times as we are told to have no fear, we are told also to be very, very afraid.

Maybe fear is more about a lack of trust. Is that what Torah is getting at? We should have complete confidence in God without any need for evidence or support other than ‘God said so’. If we learn to truly trust God, we will have no fear. We do see this theme regularly in Torah. Think about when Moses is told to talk to the rock to bring forth water, but instead, hits it twice. He is punished for this and we are never told why, but it would seem to be because Moses did not trust in the words and needed that physical manifestation of power.

Torah gives us some interesting juxtapositions about fear, courage and trust. Should we have blind faith in God and complete trust only in the divine? Or, is there some level of human free will that plays a role in any enterprise? Where do the physical and divine worlds of trust and fear meet? We still need to drive our cars, we can’t trust in God to steer a car. It would be unheard of in Judaism to substitute prayer for medical assistance—work to save a life is expressly permitted on Shabbat—even if we believe in prayers of healing. Torah recognizes human action and free will, even while demanding trust in God.

Ok, so let’s recap. We need to stand in awe of God and fear God, but we need to trust completely and have no fear, because if God is on our side we shouldn’t fear. But we need to be responsible for our own actions in the world and can’t rely on God to fix things even if we have complete trust and no fear of God. Got that? Simultaneously we need to be fearful, trusting and courageous and take action into our own hands but leave everything to God. Is that it?

For me, the epitome of this amalgam of emotions and actions is the image of Abraham with his knife raised over Isaac, that moment in the Akedah when he is prepared to sacrifice his son at God’s request. He knew very well that to swing down would end his son’s life, yet he has complete trust in God. That agonizing moment just before any movement of the knife he must have been living all those emotions of fear and courage and trust in that same crazed mix that Torah demands of us. The razor’s edge that is the balance between all those values and commandments…and after all, God did send an angel to Abraham at the last moment.

Ok, if that is what Torah says and means, what do we think of it? How can we possibly have this quantum mechanic ability to maintain completely opposite positions at the same time? What is this idealized state of trust and fear balancing against one another?

In that characterization it doesn’t feel much different than all the other themes in Torah. We are always balancing darkness and light; male and female; kashrut and treyf; Shabbat and work; one God versus idols; destiny and free will; Egypt versus the promised land. All of our stories and lessons from Torah are about that cutting edge where all these things exist and don’t exist, all those places and moments where we are all and none.

The archetypal moment is of course Shabbat. The pause after and before everything. That space between that bridges us from trust to courage or from this world to the realm of the divine. Remember, God is not in the noise and rush of the storm on the mountain, but in that pause just after.

Do I really fear God? Do I really trust God? I am sure that at moments I have had both emotions held in limbo simultaneously, but the sad truth is that most of the time I am just working my way through the world and can neither fear nor love, neither trust nor think of God. Clearly Shabbat is important to me, I keep coming back erev and boker looking for some divine connection. What I find is respite from work, the pleasure of a Jewish community, a little learning and every now and then something divine. Maybe the moments in which we are simultaneously fearful and courageous, trusting and doubtful are meant to be few and fleeting. Perhaps instead, we are meant to keep working at it. The balance is found on the journey not at the destination.

The spies only got one chance and they focused on the wrong aspect—they only thought of the destination and forgot that God was on the journey with them. Unlike the spies, we get endless chances to reach out and find those magic, fleeting moments when we can be one with the divine, or even just one with a fellow traveler. This Shabbat, let’s not be spies feeling like grasshoppers with giants ready to crush us. Instead, let’s see if we can take one moment of trust, or one moment of courage and turn it into something divine, our own personal promised land without fear. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Daniel Gordis: Time to Change the Israel Conversation

Nearly every time I open the e-mail with the latest post from Daniel Gordis, I find myself thinking. A lot. I don't always agree with him. But he always makes me think, and I am better for the exercise. Same thing today. I will cut to the chase, but only if you promise to read to the end. For a variety of reasons, which Gordis enumerates below, he and I believe it is time to have an old conversation all over again: Why do the Jews need our own state and what should its values be? This conversation often is set aside to focus on existential threats. But it is actually the thing we all need to be worried about. 

I (and I hope many of you) care deeply about Israel and see it as central to my Jewish identity. When I speak to Jewish adults my age and younger (I am 51) I do not find that to be the norm. I imagine there are many reasons for ambivalence toward Israel by Jews. I suspect one of them is battle fatigue. Too many fights. Between Arab nations and Israelis. Between Israeli Arabs and Jews. Between Palestinians and Israelis. Between Jews and Jews. For some, I suspect it has to do with actions or inactions of Israeli governments, settlers or protesters. (Trying to allow for all political approaches, but probably failing.) And some have just stopped paying attention because they are focused on things closer to home.

In any case, I agree with Gordis. Let's dream about what the Jewish state can be. As Jews living Chutz l'aretz (outside of the land of Israel), let's re-engage and become part of the process. And let's figure out what that means, both to us and to Israelis. After all, if you will it, it is no dream.

Click here to read the original posting and comment on Daniel Gordis' page.

-Ira

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Time to Change the Israel Conversation
Posted by Daniel Gordis on June 21, 2013 | 10 responses
Naftali Bennett, not long ago the election season’s “candidate to watch” and today the economy and trade minister, declared the two-state solution at a “dead end” this week, and said, memorably, that “never in Jewish history have so many people talked so much and expended so much energy on something so futile.” Bennett’s controversial comments were, in part, pandering to the the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, before whom he was speaking. But he’s held these views for a long time; his famous election campaign video, still widely available on YouTube, said precisely the same thing.

Reasonable minds can differ as to whether saying publicly that the two-state solution is dead is healthy for Israel’s standing in the international community, especially at this delicate moment when US Secretary of State John Kerry is amassing frequent flyer miles as he seeks, as have many before him, to get the process unstuck. But reasonable minds should agree – though they will not – that Bennett is right. Even were there no Israeli resistance to the idea of the two-state solution, longstanding Palestinian incalcitrance would doom the project anyway. 

The world will take much more note of Bennett’s two-minute remarks than it will of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s longstanding refusal to negotiate. When US President Barack Obama pressured Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into a building freeze that lasted for 10 months in 2010, Abbas refused to come to the table.
Now, with Kerry determined not to fail, Abbas is still complaining aloud about the relentless pressure being placed on him to do so. But if Abbas wanted a deal, why would any pressure be necessary? And even if Abbas were to change his tune, there’s still Hamas. Let’s not conveniently forget the comment by Mousa Abu Marzook, considered Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, who said Hamas would see any agreement between Israel and the Palestinians – even one ratified by Palestinian referendum – not as a peace treaty, but as nothing more than a hudna, or cease-fire.

Bennett may be right, and he may be wrong. More likely than not, the conflict will muddle along towards some slightly altered reality over the course of many years without the fanfare of a “deal” signed on the White House lawn. Yet though all this will undoubtedly leave much of the Jewish world – in Israel, America and beyond – in a fit of desperate hand-wringing, it should actually come as a relief, and as the harbinger of a significant new Jewish opportunity.

Before us now lies an opportunity to have, at long last, a renewed conversation about why the Jews need a state and the values on which is ought to be based. For far too long, 90 percent of Jewish conversations about Israel have been about Israel’s enemies. Eavesdrop at almost any Shabbat table in New York or Los Angeles, Sydney or Melbourne, London or Paris, and the conversation about Israel is almost invariably a conversation about the Palestinians, or Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, or Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We discuss, ad nauseum, how to preserve the Jewish state, without ever asking ourselves why it matters in the first place. 

But this is a self-defeating conversation. To a generation of Jews who witnessed or survived the Holocaust, or to those can still feel in their bones the dread of May 1967 around the Six Day War or the terror of the first days of the Yom Kippur War, the need for a Jewish state seems patently obvious. To those born later, however, this is decreasingly true. More and more, a younger generation of Jews, tired of a conversation about a conflict that they intuit is not going to end, bored to the point of resentment by a discussion that never elicits anything new or inspiring about the Jewish state, feels that it has had enough. 

If every comment about Israel is really about Gaza or Syria or nuclear weapons, what’s the point? THAT IS why Bennett’s remarks actually present an opportunity, even to those who wish matters were different. If there is no “deal” to be had, then there is really little point talking about it. What we can – and should – be speaking about is why the Jewish state matters in the first place.

Ironically, we now have the opportunity to initiate a conversation that instead of dividing us to the point of not being able to speak to each other, can actually unite us in a shared enterprise. What religious and secular, Left and Right, young and old can almost certainly agree on is that if we are to have a Jewish state, its society and values ought to be a reflection of the ideas and values that the Jewish people has long held dear.

But what are those values? What does the Jewish tradition have to say about balancing our need to welcome refugees who are fleeing genocide with our obligation to protect the safety of our own citizens on the streets of Tel Aviv? How do we raise a generation of young Israelis who will remain willing to risk everything to defend the Jewish state, yet who do not hate Arabs, despite the fact that we are intermittently at war with the Arab world? 

How do we balance the need to let 1,000 Jewish flowers bloom, and let Jews pray where and how they wish to pray, and teach their children what they believe they need to know, and still maintain – or create – a sufficiently cohesive public square that makes Israel not an accident of different people sharing the cities, but a meaningful collective enterprise? Conversations such as these would get us to open both and Western books. They would invite the input of secular along with religious, of progressives along with conservatives, for Jewish ideas are not the sole province of any one segment of the Jewish world.

Conversations of this sort would remind us all that the business the Jews have been in for the past several millennia is the business of ideas – imagining a world in which human life flourishes, and trying to then make that world real.
In 1762, more than a century before Theodor Herzl launched political Zionism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in Emile, said, “I shall never believe I have heard the arguments of the Jews until they have a free state, schools and universities, where they can speak and dispute without risk. Only then will we know what they have to say.” Today, we have a free state. We have schools and universities. But we’re not having the conversation that Rousseau imagined we would. The casual observer of our conversations about Israel would imagine that when we converse about Israel, all we really talk about is Arabs.

It’s time for a change. It’s time to prove Rousseau right, and to remind ourselves – and a listening world – that the Jewish conversation is actually much deeper and richer than that. Ironically, being liberated from any hope that peace is around the corner may actually make possible a much more important and enduring conversation.

"School as camp?" We can do better!

Jeff Kress has been my colleague in the Leadership Institute for the past nine years. He has taught me and many others a great deal about Social and Emotional and Experiential Learning. For the past year I have been part of and SEL study group with him, Evie Rotstein and a small group of congregation-based educators. We have spent our time exploring different aspect of how focusing on these types of learning can be effective. Yesterday, Jeff published the article below on eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

I am not going to add anything today except to say I think it is worth all of our time to read it, and that I have collected a small group of links to articles that relate to this topic at the end of the posting.

Click here for the original posting on eJP and to read other comments.

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A More Accurate Analogy?
Thinking About Synagogues, not Schools, and Camps
Posted on June 16, 2013 
by Jeffrey S. Kress, PhD

It seems that the idea of making supplemental schools more “camp-like” has gained even more momentum over the past year. In that time, I have engaged in many conversations with practitioners and researchers who shared my mix of hopefulness and skepticism about the idea. The hopefulness often springs from the freedom to think creatively about education while at the same time maintaining a developmental-growth framework to inform new initiatives. Skepticism, on the other hand, often emerges from pointing out the ways in which schools were not like camps (camps being seen as voluntary, having more contact hours, etc.).

Korach's Call For Sameness Diminishes The Equality Of Difference

Rabbi Daniel Grossman

Rabbi Daniel Grossman  is an old friend from a dozen or more CAJE conferences. Today I had the thrill of seeing him once again and learning from him at the Matan Institute for Synagogue Educators. The Institute includes interactive sessions on differentiated instruction, positive behavioral supports, organizational change theory, executive functioning, first-person experiences, concrete “ready-to-implement” ideas, resources and so much more. The article below is from the Jewish Week's blog, "The New Normal" which focuses on the the needs of Jews with special needs. BTW, Korach was my Torah portion when I became a Bar Mitzvah 39 years ago!

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This week’s parasha focuses on the rebellion of Korach. Korach’s attempt to take power from Moses rests on what at first appears to be an appeal to equality and democracy. “All the community is holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation?”

If all of Israel is equal, why should Moses have more authority than others? The problem with Korach’s argument is that to say all are equal in the eyes of God, is not to say we are all the same in our abilities before God.

Multiple Intelligences?We've Known About Them Since Sinai!

My friend and Teacher Raphael Zarum taught me that the Hagadah is nothing more than a teachers guide for teaching about Yetziat Mitzrayim - the Exodus from Egypt. He brilliantly pointed out that traditional Hagadot do not actually contain the original version from Exodus, while spending a great deal of time teaching how others have taught the story - like the five rabbis in B'nei Brak, hiding underground from Hadrian's legions.

I and others have long taught the the four children (sons if you insist) in the Pesach Hagadah are there to teach us about how we need to teach the story of the Exodus to each learner in the way they will best understand. Howard Gardner came along and gave this concept a name: Multiple Intelligences.

The Jewish Week has a newish blog called The New Normal. In this week's edition, Rabbi Daniel Grossman (a wonderful teacher I know from CAJE conferences) drashes on this week's parsha, Emor, and brings a similar lesson that takes us even deeper. Enjoy, comment and Shabbat Shalom!

Even God, even at Sinai,
spoke differently to the priests and to the people. Fotolia

Moses Taught the Priests One Way, The People Another

In this week's Torah portion, Emor, we find this sentence in the very beginning:

“And the Lord spoke to Moses: Speak to the priest, the sons of Aaron and speak to them . . .” (Leviticus 21:1)
The Rabbis in the Talmud ask the question, “Why is the word ‘speak’ used twice? If every word of the Torah is significant, why does the word speak appeartwice, when once would be enough?”

65 More Things I Love About Israel

Benji Lovett,
a really funny guy!

My friend and colleague Robyn Faintich introduced me to comedian and oleh Benji Lovitt when we were in Israel at the Lookstein Center at Bar Ilan on the Jim Joseph Fellowship. He is really funny over kubeh soup and chumus. I have yet to see him on stage, but I hear he really kills there as well! Since making aliyah in 2006, Benji has published his list of reasons why he loves Israel every year. Some of the things he lists are funny to all of us. Others will only be funny to insiders - people who live in Israel or visit a lot. I consider it my duty - and I hope yours - to focus on the ones that I don't quite get and to make that a focus of my next visit or phone call. If I truly want to be connected, I need to learn why its funny. I realize some things may require aliyah. It is good to have challenges. This was published for Yom Ha'atzmaut at the Times of Israel. 

Benji Lovitt has performed stand-up comedy for groups including Hillels, Masa Israel Journey, Birthright Israel, the Jewish Federations of North America, and more. His perspectives on aliyah and life in Israel have been featured on Israeli television, radio, and in print media. For a stand-up comedy show or educational workshop about Israeli society, contact him at benji@benjilovitt.com.

It’s that time of year again, when comedian Benji Lovitt lists things he loves about Israel, and this year’s list (all new, every year) is 65 things long in honor of Israel’s 65^th birthday. Enjoy, share the love, and Happy Independence Day from The Times of Israel!

1. I love that 45 minutes is considered a long drive in this tiny country but that people will drive three hours to Acco to eat at Chumus Said.
2. I love Tel Aviv babes riding scooters. Chicks-on-bikes: like disk-on-key but with skirts.
3. I love that the Neot Kdumim Biblical Reserve teaches team-building and leadership via shepherding goats and sheep.

A business Model for the Jewish People? Let's try Imagineering!

Yesterday, I watched a video of an ELI talk at the recommendation of Lisa Colton. It featured Sam Glassenberg and he was brilliant. Sam is the CEO of Funtactix – Israel’s top video game studio and world-leading publisher of social games for high-profile entertainment properties.

Lisa  recommended it not only because of the content, but because she was going to have a live chat today with Sam. (Video of the chat is at the end of this posting) It was a very interesting conversation. And those of us watching were able to participate via twitter. I would like to invite you to first watch Sam's initial video above. Then check out the conversation they had. If you would like to follow the twitter conversation, look up the hashtag #ELITalks for March 20, 2013. And join the conversation. On Twitter. Here. Or on ELITalks facebook page. Or the Darim Online Bookclub on Twitter. Or pick up the phone. There have been a number of responses to Sam's original video on eJewishPhilanthropy. You can see them here.

Sam talked about how J Date has turned the Jewish world upside down and how those of us in the organized part of the Jewish world are not even aware of it.

Can You Do Chavruta En Masse and Online?A Conversation about B'nai Mitzvah

I was reading the February issue of Fast Company which focused on all kinds of conversations and how they can drive us and our culture forward. It was actually quite interesting to see different takes on the idea - from Lena Dunham/Judd Apatow to Steve Jobs/Ed Catmull to Mark Zuckerberg and a high school buddy named Adam D'angelo. It was all about the art of dialogue and how the best, most creative ideas come out of dialogue.

Applying my schmaltz-colored glasses (my wife's term for my looking at everything through a Jewish lens), I see the chavruta all over this issue of the magazine. The idea that Torah was not meant to be studied on your own - like a poorly prepared student cramming for a final - but with a partner, a friend. "Find yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend..." says Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Perachya in Avot 1:6. The whole idea is that the sum of the wisdom of people in dialogue is greater than the sum of their individual ideas. I like it. I get it.

One of the dialogues in the section is "The Long And Short Of Creative Conversations" and takes place between world-class interviewer Charlie Rose and the founders of Twitter, Ev Williams and Biz Stone. It is a great piece and you can watch the entire, much longer interview on the Charlie Rose Show. I would love to have a dialogue about the topic of dialogue. Maybe later.

Williams and Stone are the guys who gave us the 140 character elevator speech. Some have called it the death of communication. Others sing it's praises (I do). They talked about a new app their company had developed called Branch. The idea is look at long-form conversation. Here is a part of their dialogue:

Photo by Christian Witkin

Williams: One (of our new projects) is Branch, which is an online conversation platform, and the concept there is very simple. If you want to have a good conversation around this table, you can't just say, "Whoever wants to show up can show up," and, you know, say two words and leave, as if it's just a free-for-all. That's essentially what online conversation has been for the past decade, and there's a beauty to that. The openness is great, but it doesn't lead to quality conversations. What Branch does is allow people to host dinner-party-like conversations and say, "Pretty much everybody can watch, but we're limiting who's actually invited to sit down at the table."

Stone: Somebody begins by inviting people to discuss a topic on Branch. In that way, it's almost modeled after what we're doing here.

Rose: Indeed. There have been I don't know how many efforts to create conversation around a dinner table for a television program, using a table to bring people together, and having somebody host it because you need someone just to kick it off.

Williams: And also to be able to end it. To say, "Thanks, everyone, I think this is the summary of what we've learned. . . ."

So I went to the Branch site. And I started my own dialogue last Friday afternoon, asking people to consider what we can do to make the process of becoming a Bar/Bar Mitzvah more meaningful to the student and family, to deepen connections with the congregation and the larger community and to enhance the entire experience. And then I invited my tweeps (folks I follow and/or who follow me on Twitter) to join the conversation. So far five have done so. You are invited as well. If you missed the invite, no worries. If I didn't send one, I am sorry. I either neither of us follows the other (please rectify that - I am @IraJWise) or your name didn't pop up. The interface for accessing your Twitter list could be a bit more elegant.

Check it out below or at http://branch.com/b/b-nai-mitzvah-and-what-it-could-be.

Jump in! The water is fine!

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WarGames: Matthew Broderick Wished He Got a Badge

A great piece before Shabbat from eJewishPhilanthropy explores using badges and Project Based Learning in Jewish Education. I would love to see how this would work in a synagogue-based school! Anyone want to play with me and figure it out? Posted on March 12, 2013 written by Sarah Blattner.

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In the 1983 film WarGames, Matthew Broderick stars as David, a precocious teen, who has computer skills beyond most of his contemporaries and adults in his life. David hacks into a military computer system named Joshua, where he is challenged to play a nuclear war game. America and Russia go head-to-head as the real military system begins to launch a countdown to start World War 3.

It was fun rewatching this film with my own children recently, where they were confused that a computer system took up the space of an entire room. As an educator contemplating learning in the digital age, I noticed the subplot. The audience gets acquainted with David’s student profile, a kid who blows off school and finds himself pretty bored in general. At first, he pings the computer system, exploring which doors are open (which is humorous to my kids, as he uses an old-fashioned telephone to connect). After researching the designer of the system, he makes contact by uncovering a password, which eventually engages the entire computer.

So what does WarGames have to do with digital badge learning and project-based learning? Let’s first frame the story through the lens of David’s actions. He begins his learning journey from a “need to know.” His quest is passion-based and interest driven. His curiosity takes him down multiple paths. He is engaged in game play and finds it invigorating. He seeks out an adult mentor, Dr. Falken, who can assist him in stopping inevitable war. He researches Falken, his contributions to computer science, and he discovers clues about the computer system, Joshua, as well as how to make face-to-face contact with his mentor. He continues to seek out more information to solve his problem. He is fully engaged, intrinsically motivated, curious and steeped in a real word experience.

Project-based learningProject-based learningProject-based learning is defined by the Buck Institute as an experience where “students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem or challenge. Rigorous projects help students learn key academic content and practice 21st Century skills, such as collaboration, communication and critical thinking.”

And why is PBL so awesome? The Buck Institute explains, “students gain a deeper understanding of the concepts and standards at the heart of a project. Projects also build vital workplace skills and lifelong habits of learning. Projects can allow students to address community issues, explore careers, interact with adult mentors, use technology, and present their work to audiences beyond the classroom. PBL can motivate students who might otherwise find school boring or meaningless.”

David’s adventures in WarGames looks a lot like PBL, doesn’t it? The deep content he explored focused on the computer system and how to teach Joshua that some games have no winner. He had choice; he had a voice; he revised solutions as he experimented along the way; he had a public audience; the experience was inquiry-driven; and his mentor helped guide his thinking. The only piece that doesn’t support ideal PBL learning scenarios is the high stakes situation of impending war. Ideally, we want our students to have low-stakes learning opportunities where they can explore, take risks, prototype and revise their understandings and models along the way.

If David were to earn a digital badge for teaching Joshua about games with no winners, what would it look like? He might have a badge learning advisor (teacher or mentor) who helps him map out his learning journey. The mentor may identify required elements in his learning journey, like learning a computer programming language, reading and responding to a collection of articles and writing a reflective blog as a transparent sharing space.

Together, David and his mentor may  craft a “need to know” question or guiding essential question that focuses his work and future project.  Along the way, David would receive frequent feedback from his mentor, experts in the field and maybe even feedback from his peers. Ultimately, David would produce some sort of product that demonstrates his learning and understandings. The artifact would be published out to the world, rather than sit on a shelf in a classroom or in a pile on a teacher’s desk.

David would earn a digital badge that is hard coded with metadata, revealing his learning pathways, rubrics for achievement, skills learned and maybe even a link to his work. He could share out this badge to the world through social media interfaces like blogs, wikis and more. And along the way, he may even earn smaller digital badges that serve as milestones in his learning journey. He may also get promoted to “peer reviewer” status within his online learning community, reviewing work of other students on computer science learning quests.

Digital badge learning is naturally framed within the tenets of project-based learning, providing opportunities for students to hone their 21st Century learning skills sets through a “need to know” quest. Teachers serve as mentors and coaches along the way, guiding students in pursuing new understandings and in building prototypes. Students are engaged, motivated and empowered. Learning is relevant, authentic and real world.
John Dewey said, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” Digital badge learning is one innovative approach that teaches for tomorrow. TAMRITZ (“incentive” in Hebrew) seeks to empower Jewish Day Schools to teach for the future through a digital badge learning network. TAMRITZ is a Jewish Day School initiative incubated by the Joshua Venture Group Dual Investment Program and supported by the AVI CHAI Foundation.


Unique to the Tamritz Badge Learning Network is a badge-based professional development e-course, “Digital Age Teaching,” where teachers are immersed in the experience and hone their 21st Century teaching and learning skill sets. Through face-to-face training, teachers also have the opportunity to develop their own badge learning curriculum, based on their school culture and program.

A “Digital Media Literacy” badge-based e-course prepares students for future badge learning experiences and sharpens their connected learning toolkits. All within a digital learning environment, teachers participate in an ongoing community of practice and students participate in a badge learning network. This means that Jewish Day School students in California can collaborate with students in Boston, review peer work and benefit from collective wisdom.

Jewish Day School teachers can share badge learning curricula and rubrics within the network.
TAMRITZ just launched a request for proposals for Jewish Day School middle schools.  The deadline for applications is Friday, April 12th.

Sarah Blattner is the founder and executive director of Tamritz.

Shabbat Unplugged...How it went

I recently wrote about participating in the National Day of Unplugging. It took place this past Shabbat. Here is what I am sharing about it in the temple bulletin next month:

 

What was it like? Nice. It was a little quieter. I didn’t avoid all technology – I drove, we watched a video and used the phone to talk. There was no internet, no texting. No checking e-mail or voice mail. I came home from work in the late afternoon on Friday, and had a conversation with my wife Audrey. We read books together. Then I prepared Shabbat dinner. My son Harper helped cook. My mother-in-law joined us for dinner. We lit candles, drank wine and ate a challah Harper had baked himself.

                                          

At right is the actual Sabbath Manifesto. You can get greater details about each point at sabbathmanifesto.org. I would say I was 7½ out of ten. (Didn’t spend time outside and I did spend money.) It was a great Shabbat. It would have been even better if we could have left later for the high school debate tournament. Then I would have been able to attend the 8:00 a.m. Shabbat service and breakfast.

If you haven’t made it to that service, you are really missing something wonderful – and easy. NO dress code (I usually wear jeans, we have seen kids in soccer uniforms heading to a 9:30 game). Services are an hour and followed by bagels and cream cheese. The fellowship (a word our Christian friends use, and is quite descriptive) of  conversation and sharing a bite with others who were at services – or who have just arrived and are planning to stay for Young Families Havurah or Torah Study – is delightful. And then on with the rest of the day.

So let me offer a challenge or an opportunity. Don’t wait until next March to sign a pledge and unplug. Give yourself a treat – one that costs nothing and pays off in the ways that truly matter. Put down the Android or iPhone – or at least use it only as a telephone from sunset on this or any Friday until three stars come out on Saturday. Try one or more of the items on the Sabbath Manifesto. Perhaps join us on Saturday morning. Hug and kiss your loved ones. Read.

Have a Shabbat Shalom (a peaceful Shabbat) – try it. You’ll like it!

A gift for Shabbat - Digital Detox

And we're back.

Like many of you, I have a SmartPhone welded to my hand. The folks at an organization called Reboot have developed a group digital detox. It is from sundown to sundown on Shabbat, one week from this Friday. They are not advocating becoming Orthodox or Amish. Just setting devices aside for a day. Keep the car, the stove, the TV (if you must) even your land line phone! Just disengage from the internet (and re-engage with the world around you, family and friends)!

The text below is from their site. What do you think? - Ira

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Do you have multiple cell phones? Take your ipad to the beach on vacation? Ever find it hard to get through a conversation without posting an update to Facebook? Is your computer always on?

We increasingly miss out on the important moments of our lives as we pass the hours with our noses buried in our iPhones and BlackBerry’s, chronicling our every move through Facebook and Twitter and shielding ourselves from the outside world with the bubble of “silence” that our earphones create.

If you recognize that in yourself – or your friends, families or colleagues— join us for the National Day of Unplugging, sign the Unplug pledge and start living a different life: connect with the people in your street, neighborhood and city, have an uninterrupted meal or read a book to your child.

The National Day of Unplugging is a 24 hour period – running from sunset to sunset – and starts on the first Friday in March. The project is an outgrowth of The Sabbath Manifesto (see the ten principles at left), an adaption of our ancestors’ ritual of carving out one day per week to unwind, unplug, relax, reflect, get outdoors, and connect with loved ones.