Not So Sure About Woocher’s “New Approach”

[cross posted to TAPBB.]

Jonathan Woocher is chief ideas officer at JESNA (Jewish Educational Service of North America) and director of the Lippman Kanfer Institute. He once thought that religion would disappear in the North American Jewish community and that all would be left would be secular institutions.

He has said,

“From an educational standpoint, there is good reason to welcome a situation in which learners drive the agenda. The learning itself will be more powerful and more enduring when it responds to authentic questions, when the learner actively seeks out the answers to these questions, and when there is ample room for diverse learning styles and formats.”

When he wrote that a few years ago, that sort of thinking was a breath of fresh air, and it was especially poignant for day school educators. At the time, booming enrollments and adequate funding gave them the opportunity to do some innovative things in their classrooms, and Woocher’s notion of learner-directed education was very helpful.

With the recent economic downturn spurring reports that day school enrollment is down, Dr. Woocher is now thinking about supplemental schools. In an article published in the recent edition of The Jewish Week, Woocher wrote:

“At JESNA, we believe that every family that wants to send its children to a quality day school should be able to do so. And we want the same for those choosing supplementary education. It will take some creative thinking and a lot of collaboration. But it’s doable, and we’re working now with our partners in central agencies across North America to make that vision a reality.”

He gives the following example of this free choice in action.

“Take a day school family now seeking an intensive supplementary program, perhaps one that meets eight or 10 hours per week, rather than the typical four or five, and that emphasizes serious Hebrew literacy, either for purposes of conversation or text study in the original. Or, take a very different, but not uncommon family whose Jewishness is primarily cultural, not religious, or focused on social justice and activism. Perhaps the family has a child who is passionate and gifted in the arts and wants to approach her or his Jewish learning through this lens. Perhaps the family is an interfaith one, and seeks a Jewish educational program that is uniquely sensitive to their life issues.”

There are only a few problems with this thinking. First, it does no good in Shreveport, Louisiana and places like it, where there are fewer than thirty students in the combined religious school. Filling classes, finding teachers, and enabling success is the problem. Offering alternative school models is beyond fantasy. This is exactly the problem that the Institute for Southern Jewish Life is successfully focusing on, and they are doing it by going in the opposite direction. They are doing it by standardizing curriculum while training and inspiring teachers.

Second, this is not a moment in history to have great faith in market driven economies. My Rabbi and teacher, Shelly Dorph, used to worry about Gresham’s Law that states that “Bad money drives good money off the market.”

He was saying that given the decision making ability, families that want less will always control the level of Jewish education. That is how we moved from three days a week to two or one. Believing that there are a significant number of families who want ten to twelve hours a week of “Hebrew School” is one of the fastest ways of putting a school out of business.

The idea of involving families in making choices is a good idea. All the best of congregations are doing so in their visioning and executing of excellence. In Jack Wertheimer’s latest study he says, “Good schools regard families as allies and also clients.”

Dr. Woocher is right that we need to have our ears to the ground, that we need to offer options wherever possible, and the market place has room for entrepreneurs who want to find and serve niche markets.

Where he is wrong, however, just as he was wrong about civil religion, is that Jewish life begins and progresses as community. This is not the time to follow the rules of the market place, but of the extended family who knows how to meet the needs of each member.

Altneu Non-Shul — The Sunday School for Jewish Studies

[cross-posted to TAPBB]

Started around 1970 by some Harvard professors, just about the same time some other Harvard faculty started the Harvard Hillel Children’s School (that morphed into Congregation Eitz Chayim), The Sunday School for Jewish Studies is a non-synagogue, parent cooperative, not for profit, way of providing a Jewish education and accessing a bar/bat mitzvah experience.

The school was featured in a recent article in the Boston Globe. The article described it as (a) a non-Synagogue and (b) cheaper way of providing a bar/bat mitzvah. The article centers on the fact that this “non brick and mortar” (non) institution that charges as little as 1/4 the cost of belonging to (and sending your kids to school at) a “brick and mortar” synagogue.

Here are the things I know.

[1] Harvard Hillel Children’s School (that I do know about) was started as a chance to provide an innovative, better, experimental Jewish education for a number of positively identified but “syno-phobic” Jews. It did a lot of pioneering work with adult education, family education, alternative education and a lot of the other frontier (for its age) areas of Jewish Education. For a lot of years it was guided by Rabbi Cherie Kohler Fox and her husband Dr. Everett Fox. The hallmark of the school was not its cost, but its ability to innovate. Much of that innovation was its ability to create community among a population that was considered fringe. That community ultimately felt the need to evolve into a synagogue.

[2] I had never heard about The Sunday School for Jewish Studies until The Globe article appeared. The little I’ve been able to learn about it on the internet makes it sound little different from the Harvard Hillel Children’s school at its prime. It is devoted to serving its students and its families. It has a social action vision of Judaism. It is open to all kinds of definitions of Jewish family. All this is to be praised!

[3] It is The Globe article that bothers me, not my understanding of The Sunday School. I have nothing against Jews creating independent institutions that meet their own needs. I have nothing against people choosing and creating alternatives to the synagogue. I do wish Jewish life was cheaper. What bothers me is the smug sense that this is a better way of providing a Jewish education because it has less overhead. The article provides no other way of evaluating the quality of the education offered at this school.

The article ends by quoting the father of a Bar Mitzvah, “He read it perfectly. I’d put his training up against any synagogue training,” Note: the standard was “his training” not “his education.” The author has a pretty classic misunderstanding of Jewish education. The school’s job is to “train” students for b’nai mitzvah. If the kid reads well, the school must have succeeded. It’s an economics equation. The school provides a product (“training”) for less money, so it must be a great deal.

[4] The article actually comes as a warning. The congregational school, that long believed that it has a monopoly on non-day school Jewish education, now needs to look over its shoulder. While we thought the major threat would come from “tutoring,” there are other alternatives on the horizon. Simply put, we are not the only way to have a bar/bat mitzvah. God’s creation of this world does allow for the rental of tents, the borrowing of Sifrei Torah and the photocopying of service booklets. If the only thing our schools offer is bar mitzvah training, we have a big problem because (a) we know that this isn’t a sufficient Jewish education, and (b) as this article teaches us, families can get a do-it-yourself b’nai mitzvah somewhere else.

[5] So here’s my final synthesis:

The article teaches us that congregational schools are not the cheapest Jewish education option in many cities. But we need to be the best. The research of Dr. Jack Wertheimer (School that Work: What We Can Learn from Good Jewish Schools) puts creating a nurturing Jewish Community, engaging Judaism at a high level, providing opportunities for experiential education, and valuing themselves and their students on the list of elements of high-quality Jewish schools.

As my friend and teacher, Rabbi Phil Warmflash, likes to point out, “The success of the synagogue school has as much to do with the success of the synagogue as the success of the school.”

Self-Paced, Point & Click: The Jewish Problem with Programmed Instruction

[cross-posted to TAPBB]

Programmed Instruction

There is a growing fantasy in Jewish education that everything will be better if we only take the teacher out of the equation. This is manifesting itself in the claim that low level computer exercises can replace a day a week of Jewish learning. And it is leading to tools like self-checking folders that students work their way through at their own pace. What all of these hold in common is a reliance on an old education technique, programmed instruction, which was used mainly for industrial training and has mainly shown itself to be a failure in general education.

Programmed instruction grew out of the work of B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist who believed that learning was conditioning. In rewarding students who get the right answer, students become conditioned to repeat that answer. Programmed instruction sends students through a series of frames where they (a) receive information, (b) are asked about that information, and (c) are shown the correct answer. In more sophisticated forms, there is now a “branching” opportunity. If the student got the answer right, they move on to the next frame. If they get it wrong, they are put into a review loop.

The good news seems to be (a) the ability of each student to move at his/her own pace, (b) a high rate of retention (at least in the short term), and (c) the freeing of the class from the imposition of a teaching doing bad “frontal” education. But most of the advocates of programmed instruction, whether in software or folders, seem to forget three things:

1. Levels of Learning

Benjamin Bloom, one of my teachers, wrote a big book with J. Thomas Hastings and George F. Madaus called Handbook on Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning. In it is a taxonomy of educational objectives that describes a series of “levels” of learning. In the cognitive domain there are six: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The problem is simple. Jewish life and real Jewish learning is all about Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation, the higher levels. Programmed Instruction is best for Knowledge, Comprehension and Application, the lower three levels.

There is also a taxonomy of affective objectives: Receiving (or Awareness), Responding, Valuing, Organization, and Characterization by a value or value complex. These affective objectives (usually called “Krathwohl’s Taxonomy”) are all about a process called “internalization,” whereby a student’s affect towards something goes from being aware (that’s the “receiving” part) all the way to the point where their affect has been internalized and consistently guides or controls the person’s behavior. It’s the path between knowing that kavod is a Jewish value and going through life treating people with kavod. Programmed Instruction can get you to Awareness, but it is not great at getting to the rest of the domain. Jewish education should be all about valuing and the rest of that process.

The argument can be made that Programmed Instruction is mainly being used to teach Hebrew language. That Alef Bet is only Alef Bet is partially true. But Alef Bet leads to Ashrei and Ashrei is supposed to build a connection to God. While learning folders with self-checking and computer programs may have a role in mechanical learning, they are incapable of taking it any further. When do you feel close to God? What is the right thing to do in this case? What do you think of when you say the Shema? These are all moments of Jewish learning that are simply not part of a computer’s function.

2. Community

The purpose of Bar and Bat Mitzvah is to acknowledge that a child is now old enough to function as an adult in the ritual life of the Jewish people. Reading Torah is a symbol that a child can now function as a member of the community. A new adult can now be counted in a minyan. Most importantly, this means that a new adult is old enough to go to a shiva house and be counted among those whose responsibility it is to help heal the pain of death. If we are going to turn our schools into B’nai Mitzvah mills, we could do worse than if they included the skills of participating in Jewish communal life and learning compassion and empathy. Those are not things that come from the kind of computer programs we have and are likely to have in the foreseeable future. They are the inverse of things learned when each student is moving at his or her own pace.

Tolerance is one of the things that one learns from being part of a learning community. So is patience, leadership, and being a good listener. The best way to learn how to participate in community life is practice. It is not an accident that Jews pray in community and demand community for most Jewish events. Studying prayer at home on the computer is not the best way to learn about community. Working alone at your own folder, checking your own answers, doesn’t develop leadership skills.

3. Teachers

Finally, the Jewish tradition believes in teachers. It sees teachers as rich (not mechanical) enablers of individualization and personalization. Teachers allow lessons to go off on tangents, listen to student needs, and take advantage of the moment. Teachers can appreciate and celebrate, understand and empathize. A teacher-free classroom can maybe transmit Jewish information, but it is not a Jewish classroom. The modeling of the Jewish classroom as Jewish learning community, the enabling of the community by a person manifesting and applying Jewish values – this is our goal. I know of no one who can claim that their best learning moment took place when completing a self-guided booklet. Not every teacher is ideal, but teachers are our ideal.

Every teaching tool that is effective has its time and purpose. Programmed instruction and computer-assisted instruction are tools that have their time and place. But ironically, as we have less time to spend together with our students, now is precisely the time for more student-teacher interaction, not less. As we are trying to teach the skills of communal worship, now is precisely not the time to invite our students to learn Hebrew from computer screens. When we are trying to instruct our students to maximize their humanity and use it to change the world, now is precisely the time to make human interaction a foundational value of Jewish education. The elimination of the human in education is a step backwards.

Steps Forward

At Torah Aura Productions, we are dedicated to producing curricular materials that realize a depth of understanding rather than focusing only on facts and feelings. That means that we also must be active partners with teachers and educators to maximize the Jewish educational impact on their students.

Programmed instruction is perfectly useful if the goal is to develop students who can perform at a one-time event. We’re encouraging a different goal: students who are lifelong Jews. Our mission is to make materials that help teachers and educators to enable their students to become empowered Jewish adults.

We believe in doing what it takes to develop good teachers who can actualize impactful Jewish learning. That may be more difficult than asking teachers to facilitate programmed instruction in booklets or on computer screens, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Human interaction is the key to the Jewish future. And because we believe in humanity, we believe that Jewish schools can succeed at doing something bigger, better and worthwhile.

Spending Wisely in Difficult Times

[Cross posted to TAPBB.]

We’re hearing from a lot of schools that the difficult economic situation is having a profound impact on Jewish education. Synagogues are being forced to slash budgets, staff are taking pay cuts, and jobs hang in the balance.

With all these challenges, choosing books and curricular materials can be an especially daunting job. How can you make a shrinking amount of money go even further? Where can we “trim” without sacrificing the excellence in education that students and their families have come to expect? How can you drain a bit of the metaphorical bathwater without losing the baby?

We want to help you think about the choices you are going to have to make. We know you’re probably going to have to make cuts, but we want to help you keep the baby. Here are some thoughts.

Curricular materials are worth buying when:

1. They are books of texts. Ask yourself, “Are there words in these books (not just information) that are worth knowing?” Texts have a special role in the process of Jewish learning. We are a people of “quotations.” We learn not only with words, but we learn words. Text study invites a process of interpretation. To make sense of a text, a learner must choose its meaning. The process of studying texts is a process of deciding what they mean to the individual learner. In working with them, learners come to affirm what they believe is Jewish—and to draw the limits of what they believe is not Jewish, or not their Judaism. Text study is a process of saying “yes” and “no.” Text study is a process of identity formation.

Texts are conversations. They are chances to state, “To me this text means x,” while another student gets to say, “To me the text says y.” In bouncing meanings off of each other, students get to clarify their own understandings while building connection to those involved in the dialogue. Dialogue over texts builds community. People share intimacies. They feel closer. Talking together leads to more talking together. The end result of good conversation, conversations about meaning, is a sense of community. Texts create shared experiences.

Texts bring the past into the future. They are valuable relics of the past that we can carry forward. But unlike a Bronze-Age pot, texts also have a future. They teach us not only about their original context, the time and place where they were created but they also help us build the future. Texts’ meanings continue to evolve as we develop. A text doesn’t only have one meaning. Texts are stronger than memories because texts continue to offer a chance to choose and apply understandings. Texts are truths that travel and grow with us, and give us a chance to root an evolving Judaism in our ancient tradition.

Simply put, textbooks are worth buying when they are books of good texts.

2. They are filled with experiences. There are experiences and there is busy work. The key question is not if a book offers “seat work” that keeps kids busy. The question is not how much drill and practice a book offers. (And that is not saying that drill and practice isn’t valuable but drilling is one of the things you can do without textbooks.)

The core question needs to be: What kind of interactive and memorable learning does a book facilitate?

If a textbook involves reading and writing, that’s not enough. Either one of those alone is certainly not enough. But, if a book facilitates small group work, if it demands inquiry, if it leads to debates or theater or art or original discoveries, if its product is active learning… then it is worth having. Then you need it.

You have to ask yourself a few questions. Without these materials, would a classroom look different? Would it be difficult for a teacher to invent a memorable classroom without curricular resources? Would it be difficult for students to make authentic Jewish meaning for themselves without a textual foundation?

A good textbook should provide the resources for a classroom adventure. Textbooks are not for reading aloud. They are not to be lectured about. They are not a resource for word puzzles and self-evident questions, or a replacement for information that is easily found elsewhere. If a textbook is going to be worthwhile, it needs to facilitate great (not just adequate) learning moments. If your textbooks don’t do this, don’t buy them again next year.

3. They grow a teacher’s skills and abilities. It there is nothing that brings new insights to the table — if a textbook doesn’t enable a teacher to explore new kinds of activities and expand their teaching vocabulary — then save your money. A good textbook brings resources to the class that teachers would not or could not find on their own. It involves teachers in creating classroom moments that they would or could not create on their own. After using a book, a teacher should grow in their understanding of the content, expand in their relationship to the material, and move into classroom tools that are new for them. Good curricular materials are not about repetition. Rather, they should be vehicles for innovation. They should challenge both students and teachers and allow both to soar.

Research has shown that new teachers do better with the traditional combination of textbook, workbook, and teacher’s guides. The researchers suggest that it is the structure that provides success. Rather than worrying about what to do, the teacher can focus on how to do. For new teachers, books offer a path to success that is a helping tool. That would be a good enough reason to purchase a textbook for a new teacher. But the right book provides the foundation that lets a teacher improvise and improve. Rather than defining textbooks as millstones, think of them as stages on which teachers can perform.

4. They are necessary for effectively teaching Hebrew and Prayer. Language work is different. While oral-aural Hebrew can be taught somewhat successfully with limited print material, visual learners need resources that enable their success. But the core issue that needs to be addressed is whether there is real benefit to the Hebrew-Prayer materials you are using. The question that you must start with: “What do your students learn that they wouldn’t learn from just using the siddur itself?” A good Hebrew primer enables success that lasts. Think about how many of your students retain their mastery of the alef-bet. When it comes to the siddur, think about what your students learn. If they are just mastering the performance of the prayers, save your money and use the siddur. A good siddur curriculum should go into the meaning and kavanah (spiritual purpose) of the prayers, enable an understanding of the placement and sequence of each prayer in the siddur, and should grow students’ ability to understand the Hebrew of the siddur through mastering and applying language structures.

You’ll notice that lots of Hebrew-Prayer materials are quietly getting more expensive. Make sure that you are getting true cost-benefit from you Hebrew-Prayer resources. Are your students learning twice as much? Are more of them coming to services? Are your teachers inspired to make their classrooms interesting places? If you don’t have three “yes” responses, consider switching your curriculum.

The bottom line:

Even though we are interested in selling you books, we’re interested in you spending your budget wisely. School educators and principals tell us that they are first-and-foremost interested in two outcomes: happy kids and happy parents. Until those two are satisfied, you can’t get to the real work of ensuring a Jewish future. You need resources that excite students in class and that get the most out of your teachers.

For a book to be worth the money, it has to come off the page. It has to become conversation (not just short answers). It has to be meaningful (not just entertaining) to students and parents, because novelty doesn’t last long. A book should make a connection with eternity, with learning that is not only for the moment, but will last a lifetime.

We believe that Torah Aura Productions offers affordable excellence. Call us. We’ll be more than happy to help you make choices within your budgetary limitations. We are committed to work with you and to help you succeed.

CAJE: Up from the Ashes

[cross posted to TAPBB]

On the poster that changed CAJE’s name from the Coalition for “Alternatives” in Jewish education to the Coalition for the “Advancement” of Jewish Education was this Midrashic quotation picked out by Stuart Kelman.

At the end of the great persecution our teachers met together at Usha… They sent to the elders of Galilee saying, ‘Whoever has learned, let him come and teach, and whoever has not learned, let him come and learn.’ They came together and studied and took all necessary steps.
[Song of Songs Rabbah 2:18]

It perfectly captured the dream. CAJE started out as a dream. There were a bunch of us sitting around on the sofas at Boston University Hillel talking about the teaching we were all doing in Hebrew Schools. (We hadn’t yet gotten to Supplemental Schools or Congregational Schools or the other “reconceptualizations” of the process). The insight came from Cherrie Koller-Fox. She said, “We all have something to teach each other.” We began to imagine a local teacher’s conference where each of us would teach stuff, and get to learn stuff from others. Nothing came of that particular conversation. I don’t know how many times it was repeated. Eventually it made it the Network of Jewish Students who decided to hold a first Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education at Brown University, to a Continuations committee who held a second conference at the University of Rochester, and then an organization was birthed. A few of us on the West Coast (Wolfson, Kelman, and Grishaver) put together (with a single staff person, Jody Hirsh) a West Coast Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education. That was the third. And from then on the national organization took root and created its annual conference. It was all very Woodstock.

The midrash from Song of Songs was speaking of the Hadrianic persecutions, the Roman reaction to the Bar Kokhba revolt. When CAJE was formed, we were speaking about a tyranny of formality and the chains formed by the status quo. Today we are suffering from famine. Dire famine as nourishment for Jewish education shrinks and fades. There is no Egypt, there is no Joseph to go to. We have only ourselves as a resource. No single foundation is going to save us. This puts the obligation on us. With CAJE not happening, our job is to gather (not this summer, but soon) to teach and learn. Our reaction to the floundering of CAJE can’t be sadness but motivation. What had been taken care of for us, we must now do for ourselves.

The international growth of Limmud and the success of the Hazon Food Conference show that the basic CAJE model (the model away from which CAJE has drifted) is still viable. To a large degree, CAJE’s shift away from this model was a big contributor to its present state of decline.

Here’s what I believe:

1. The North American Jewish Community needs an annual trans-ideological, pluralistic education conference.

2. It needs to be lead by 20-30 year olds, not late 50 and 60 year olds. We who founded CAJE have a role as mentors and elders.

3. I don’t know whether what follows will still be called CAJE or not, but I do know that it must travel light and lean, and return to an emphasis on volunteerism.

4. I know that it must be accessible and desirable to lay people as well as educational professionals and that means an emphasis on Tikkun Olam and Torah l’Shma needs to be more prevalent in the mix.

5. Whatever we restart will need to involve coalitions between the educational organization and other players in the Jewish community—including a lot of new organizations.

6. The words, “we’ve always done it this way” need to be banned.

7. The keys need to be a fusion of “big names” and a renewal of the chance for “new voices.” The notion of grassroots needs to be revived.

8. We need to speak to all of those “who outgrew CAJE” not with a few new elements, but with a fundamental reconsideration.

We sit in a moment where much of what we know is collapsing. We have no choice but to rebuild. We need another gathering at Usha.

Teaching Israel When Israel is at War

[cross-posted to TAPBB]

Crossing the internet are two prayers. One is a prayer for Israel’s soldiers. The other is a prayer for the civilians of Gaza. Both are recommended as the way for teachers to begin their classes.

The problem is not that one is being asked to choose between these two prayers. Supporting both wishes is not a problem. Prayers for safety can’t be too many. And the problem is not that prayer seems to be the major response to War. Prayer is a good response to War. The problem is that this seems to be the only major public response besides a zillion causes to join on Facebook.

There is of course a need to teach “The War.” Explaining the background and context of the fighting is probably obligatory. Some teachers in some schools will teach the situation one way, some will teach it the other. My purpose here is not to argue for either Sderot or for the Palestinian population. Great teaching will make both of these “siduations” clear. The argument I want to make here is something else. That is, now is a time when we must teach about Israel, build connection to Israel, and to help our students understand that Israel is important in our lives. This is not a statement of Israel right or wrong. It is rather an expression of what I learned from Steven M. Cohen, that “We must teach that one can both love Israel and disagree with some of Her actions.” Do not take this as a statement that I think that Israel Gaza’s campaign is wrong. My reactions are actually more complex and not important to our discussion anyway. Do not take it as a statement of an expectation that students are going to flock to class with all kinds of expression of outrage at Israel’s actions. (That would actually be a great starting point—because the discussion would flow.)

My great fear is that the War, and the school with forty mainly women and children dead, and the general confusion of conflicting truths are perfectly good reasons to care less about Israel because it is too confusing, too complex, too far from our students’ experience. What scares me is not either position on who is wrong, nor the understanding that there is enough wrong to go around, but complete ambivalence. What I care about is caring about Israel.

In 1975 I was a brand new youth director at North Shore Congregation Israel, in Glencoe Illinois. Yom Kippur came. The War came. And I of a sudden I had a couple of hundred kids working the streets and going door to door collecting money for Mogen David Adom. That story is ancient history. It is as long ago as the rotary dial telephone. We live in a universe with different physics. We know that many of our families have little or no feeling about Israel. We know that the same is true of many of our kids.

Because Israel is at War, we need to be shouting “you are connected to Israel.” “You have a relationship with Israel.” “Israel’s future impacts your future.” Now is the time to emphasize knowledge about Israel, Zionist (or post-Zionist) ideology, and simple family relationships. You can teach “The War” or not teach “The War,” but you need to teach “the love.” I would hope that students can locate Gaza on the map. I wish that Tzipi Livni, Benyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Mahmud Abbas, Tzahal, Hamas, and Hezbollah were part of their vocabulary. It is easy to create a taxonomy of objectives for teaching “The War,” for explaining “the situation.” Matzav is a good vocabulary word.

But what I really want is this. I at least want them to care about Israel the way that I care about Boston sports teams. I never go to games. I live in Los Angeles but grew up in Boston. I have family in Boston. Boston is sort of my homeland. I don’t watch games of any kind on TV. But as the season comes to an end, I know if a Boston team is near the top. If Boston moves into the post season, I begin to know the scores. If they are in a super bowl, world series, or championship, I will probably watch some if not all of the games. Ideally, I’d want our students to care more about Israel than I care about the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics. But at the very least I want Israel to be for our students what Boston sports is in my life. I want them to care about the outcome.

So now is a time to make falafel and sing “Im Tirtzu.” We need to be dancing “Hinei Mah Tov u’Mah Nayim” and “Mah Na’avu.” Students should be finding Haifa on the map and learning that Ben Gurion like to stand on his head cause he thought it was good for his health. What we need to be doing is teaching Israel more than ever. And, if we do so, the questions about The War will come, and we will be able to answer them the way we want to answer them, providing we add, “And you are still connect to the land, people, and Nation of Israel—no matter how you feel about some of her actions.

Did God Create the Dinosaurs?

by Joel Lurie Grishaver
[cross-posted to TAPBB]

I was doing a workshop on “teaching God” to about sixty San Diego teachers. We get to the point in the conversation where I ask them to bring into our discussion questions about God that their students have asked them. And the winner was, a third grade teacher who had a student ask, “Did God Create the Dinosaurs?” Teachers frequently bring up this question when I do God workshops. They get asked it all the time (especially by precocious eight-year-olds), and they’re not sure that they know the right answer to give.

It is not as simple a question as it might seem. What it represents is a testing of two information sources. For an eight-year-old, dinosaurs are the heart of scientific reality. It is what they buy at science museums and read about in science books. Dinosaurs are a symbol of history that has been reconstructed from bones and fossils and clues. They are the end result of the scientific method, the C.S.I. of history. On the other hand, the Bible (Torah) is God’s truth. In the reality experienced by most eight-year-olds, the Torah is not yet a metaphor. It is literal. The distinction between it being a book of truth rather than a book of history (science) is not yet comprehensible.

Kashrut the Business, Kashrut the Ethical Aesthetic

About a week ago the New York Times ran this story:

An immigration raid at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant has opened a wide rift among Jewish leaders over the company’s ethical conduct and led to new interest in a campaign to create wage and safety standards for workers producing kosher food.

It tells (1) of America’s largest glatt Kosher plant that was shut down by immigration for a series of labor violations including unpaid overtime, underage works, illegal immigrants, dangerous conditions, and the like. (2) It voices the opinion of Rabbi Morris J. Allen who is backing a project in the Conservative movement called Hekhsher Tzedek (that means “justice certification” in Hebrew), and it (3) shares the opinion of major Kashrut authorities that suggest that everything is well now that the problem is fixed.

My issue here is not to say that Morris Allen is right. Arguing that Kashurt requires ethics as well as dietary rules is his position. That’s too obvious for anyone who doesn’t object to evolution being taught in the public schools. But rather, what a great time we live in. Here is a moment when we can teach kashrut as meaningful. When we can talk about ethical kashrut and eco-kashrut. We can make the issue of Kashrut (being fit for Jewish use) a whole new moment. We can’t get the instant lessons out fast enough, but a word to the wise: jump on this moment and start teaching.

Invitation and Obligation (or “What I Learned on My Summer Vacation”)

(cross posted to TAPBB)

I am getting old. I learned that at the CAJE conference. We were out to dinner with a number of young educators and I got into an argument. It took a few days to realize that I was wrong (and that is sad). Sad not cause I can’t handle being wrong, but sad because more of the world I believe in is disappearing.

A while ago Steven M. Cohen wrote an important article called “Outreach to the Marginally Affiliated” (Steven M. Cohen, “Outreach to the Marginally Affiliated: Evidence and Implications for Policy-makers in Jewish Education,” Journal of Jewish Communal Service 62, No. 2 (Winter 1985): 147-157). It appeared in the original Torah Aura volume, What We Know About Jewish Education. He has a new article in the new volume, What We Now Know About Jewish Education. In “Outreach” he teaches two important lessons. First, that we need to realize that many more Jews have contact with the Jewish community that we imagine. If you look over a lifetime we find that most Jews have contact (and affiliation) with the Jewish community over the course of their lifetime. If we take a snapshot of affiliation and participation at a given moment, we find that the number is less than fifty percent. His conclusion is that we do a very bad job of holding on to Jews who come to us at a given moment in their life and then drift away. He suggests that our major outreach needs to be not to the unaffiliated but to the marginally affiliated. His second insight is the one that proved me wrong, that we need to speak the language of “invitation” rather than the language of “obligation.”

Here was the argument. One of the educators proudly stated that she has expanded the number of students who participate in her synagogue’s madrikhim program by changing the obligation that they continue their own Jewish education at the same time. The educator went on to say that they will credit any Jewish experience as valid high school learning. You don’t have to come to our classes. You can do youth group, belong to a Jewish club at school, etc.

Having been raised with (and sometimes still trapped in) the “language of obligation,” I objected. I would like to see every Jewish teacher with an obligation to continue their Jewish education, let alone a high school student we are training.

My mistake was in thinking (and there is no sarcasm here) that students who opt to be madrikhim (and take on that responsibility) can be thought of as insiders and asked to do more. My mistake was in not realizing that in this day and age, leadership high school kids are still marginally affiliated and need “invitations.” I think that it is both sad and true. In The Jew Within, (Steven M. Cohen and Arnold Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in the United States, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) we learn that there are no guarantees. No one who makes a Jewish commitment can ever be assumed to continue that commitment forever. Rather, they subscribe to the sovereign-self, an absolute ability to make their own choices regardless of pressure or “assumption” from the Jewish community.

What I forgot that night, even though I may have once been right, that in the physics of our new universe (in the string-theory of Jewish affiliation) “invitation” always trumps “obligation.” While I really want Jewish learning post Bar Mitzvah and hope that it is deep and transformative, none of us can mandate it. While I believe that the community built by a combination of Jewish activities is the most powerful force for Jewish continuity, a strong “No” can easily lead to a “goodbye.”

So here is my apology. To a younger and vibrant group of Jewish professionals, I am glad that you are around, and force me—even if slowly—to reconsider the truths I hold too true.

We are Three Point One Four One Seven Nine

When I was younger, the federation slogan used to be “We are One;” just like the Israeli song that says “Am Ehad Im Lev Ead” (one people with one heart). What got me thinking about all this, a conversation with friends. They have a college bound son who has little to no interest in Judaism. They feel like they did everything right: Weekly Shabbat at home, Day School, Parents who went to Shul every week, and a house oozing Jewish commitment. They are playing “Where did we go wrong?” While I assured them that the story is far from over–and it is. What was clear to me was that they had missed the survival triangle of Jewish life: camp, youth group, and an Israel trip. By no means am I saying “Never” in this case. But this much I know.

A bad Bar Mitzvah experience with a rabbi who was too self-important soured the kid on Religious Judaism and in the kid’s mind he had no fall back position. It isn’t so much the kid’s fault. It isn’t particularly the parents fault. It is the collapse of the the experience of Jewish peoplehood. Peoplehood is complicated. Political correctness put us in a poly-ethnic universe. Society proved that intermarriage can work. Israel has not been overwhelming attractive for a long time. And, intermarriage and spirituality has done a lot to focus Jewish life on the religious more than the national. In the supplemental school market we have abandoned communicative Hebrew and taught that strange anomaly called “Siddur Hebrew” (and done that poorly). We have reduced the amount of Israeli Dance and Music in favor of the explosion of American created liturgical music. We may teach cooking, but Rye bread with given away to Native Americans and other ethnicities a long time ago. Frank Sinatra loved it!

We’ve been in a moment for a long time where Israel is low on the radar, demanding a Jewish spouse is considered racist, and peoplehood as a concept–even al a Mordechai Kaplan–is out of favor. Forget about choseness, peoplehood like gribness is all but gone.

And the simple truth is like this survivability is highly depended on the solitary thread of Jewish religiosity which is a lot like playing a harp with one string. The polyphonic dynamic of Judaism has lots of melodies to offer, a whole range of options that we need to re-expand. And somehow, the label of peoplehood, of nationality as an element needs to be given a good name. I don’t yet have answers. I am working on it. But I do need to share the problem and the challenge. Join me.

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