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.

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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Israel and Family Education

My understanding of the relationship between Israel education and family education starts with two working assumptions. (1) The most important out come of any Israel education is to get students to visit Israel in the future. We’ve talked in previous postings about the research that says the only significant way to influence student’s connection to Israel is to visit Israel. Also, we know from a study of family education in Boston that (2) parental attitudes towards the importance of visiting Israel have a lot to do with whether students will visit Israel (that’s obvious) and (more importantly) those attitudes are hard to change.

One not-so-secret truth is that family education is all about getting parental buy-in. While we do have objectives about building the communications and healthiness of family, and we are interested in Jewish growth within the family, most of this happens through changes in parental attitudes. We get Shabbat celebrated in the family more because parents become willing than because students ask for it. The same is true of Israel.

The shopping list is easy. We want parents to own pieces of Israel, to shop Israel, to read Israel, to watch Israel, to listen to Israel, and we would love them to visit Israel. The question is, how do we do that. My “I don’t know” is that “I don’t know how to design a family education or five about Israel that can bring interest where there is ambivilence.”

What you gotta remember is that studies have suggest that most Jewish adults don’t feel negatively towards Israel, they are not angry at Israel’s politics or actions, but rather, they just don’t care. Our job is to build caring.

So what do we know about caring? We know that passion can spark passion. People we can share their love and their commitment for Israel help to build it in others. We know that stories make a difference. We know that experiences build connection. But, I also think I know that one-hour pretend trips to Israel that start on a pretend airplane and end with falafel is not likely to make a great difference. I also have to admit that I am not sure how to do it better.

An example: Years ago I taught a seventh grade class that was twelve boys and three girls, and despite my best efforts I don’t believe I got them to change their attitudes towards much. The year after me that had a young Israeli guy just out of the army. He told them lots of “war” stories and they fell in love with him. He made a big shift in their connection with and commitment to Israel. I don’t know how to predict that again. It had a lot to do with chemestry (and a lot to do with boys who were enamored with stories about guns). If I could bottle the experience I would have the answer.

But at the same time, the class in question inspires cynicism. Despite having an engaging Israeli teacher, virtually none of the kids in the class visited Israel, though they pre-dated the Birthright generation. And further, the class’ intermarriage stats don’t speak well for the Jewish future.

So the question remains: How do we use family education to build parental connection with Israel?

My final take is that it’s the wrong question. The real question is, How do we transform synagogue culture (that includes school culture) to cultivate the connection between our families and Israel? I think the truth is that this is a bigger than a “change the school to fix things” issue. I think while we can plan better family education events, and we are working on them for the Artzeinu Wikki, the real question is, How can we change the nature of Jewishness to re-include a sense of peoplehood and a connection to Israel?

Beyond Distancing: Lessons About Our Success at Teaching Israel

(cross posted to TAPBB)

Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and their Alienation from Israel is a new study by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman (you can find it by clicking here). The study looks at the connection 21-35 year olds have to Israel.

I read the study a few weeks ago, and have since spoken to both authors. I’m now convinced more than ever that their findings have important implications for Jewish education. We need to rethink the way we teach about Israel.

According to the study, connection to Israel is much lower than we would like, ambivalence towards Israel is high, and anger towards Israel not very high. The survey shows that most young Jews just don’t care. Israel is not a category of their concern. In other words, the kind of teaching we have been doing about Israel for twenty or more years hasn’t worked. The study finds that two things make a difference and lead towards higher connections (and in my conversation with Dr. Cohen I learned about a third).

First, Cohen and Kelman come to a simple conclusion about Israel education, one that the Birthright funders figured out a while ago, but that doesn’t always trickle into supplementary school classrooms. Trips matter. More trips are better than fewer, and trips of longer duration have more impact than those with shorter duration. The study shows that 19 percent of young Jews who have never been to Israel exhibit a “high” level of attachment, the number jumps to 34 percent after a first trip and 52 percent after two or more visits. On the other hand, 42 percent of young Jews who have never been to Israel report a “low” level of attachment. That number drops to 17 percent after just one trip.

So what does all this mean for teaching Israel? It is actually simple. Though we may encourage visits to Israel, our classroom teaching has tended to be for Ahavat Yisrael (love of Israel) where it actually needs to be Bikkur Yisrael (visiting Israel). While we have used a “tour” of Israel as a standard teaching format, we haven’t pushed the edge and say, “go.”

We need to be saying, “GO!”

One of the lessons of this study is that members of the current generation of young adults — in a marked departure from their Boomer parents — have an immense ability to not feel. There is a numbness that comes with the over-stimulation of new technology. They have a great ability to resist influence, or at least a lot of classic formulae of influence, so that an overstated “GO!” will not be heard. What needs to be built is a consistent connection to Israel and an on-going fantasy of going to Israel.

In other words, saying “You should go visit Israel,” isn’t enough, even if we say it emphatically, frequently, and persistently. What we really need to be doing is helping our students understand that visiting Israel is as important as b’nai mitzvah or eating latkes. And we need to start sending this message early, before the empathy kicks in.

Simply put, we need to start preparing our fifth graders for Birthright.

The level of connection to Israel does not mean that young American Jews are less “Jewish.” A whole bunch of recent studies and anecdotal evidence demonstrate great cultural and religious creativity and vitality among young Jews. Israel is just not as much a part of that picture. The second factor that seems to make a difference seems to be that in-married Jews seem to reflect a stronger connection to Israel than out-married Jews.

The not-in-the-report side note I got from Dr. Cohen is that Canadians also seem to have a greater connection to Israel (and I don’t believe that is dependent on a greater proximity to moose). The key factor that has both to do with Jewish creativity and growth, and with a lessening of Israel identification is the downward spiral of ethnicity and the spike in the creation of original and alternative Jewish settings. It is the collapse of ethnicity and the rise in perception of Judaism as a religion.

There seems to be a relationship between Jewish ethnicity and automatic identification with Israel — and the basic truth is that we are in a post-ethnic era. Counting Jewish nobel prize winners just doesn’t count anymore. Ethnicity is really hard for a school to teach, especially today. So our solution is doing what we can to get our students to Israel. That specifically, is the focus of Artzeinu, our new Israel text.

The other important part of the lesson is that politics don’t seem to affect this new generational ambivalence. It is not that the extreme left is convincing large numbers of Jews to be anti-Israel. It is not that their ethics has favored a better solution for Palestinians. It is simply that Israel is not a category that has made impact on far too many of the students we turn out. When I talked to Ari Kelman, his final words were “Get kids to Israel.” When I talked to Steven M. Cohen, his final words were, “Teach them that it is possible to love Israel and disagree with some of their actions.” Our job is not to ignore the political situation, but to transcend it. We need to move past love and to desire. We need to do everything possible to make travel to Israel an expectation for far more of our students and their families.

A Textbook is a Collection of Programs

Who wants to teach Israel from a textbook?

Israel is an exciting, real place full of interesting people and cool things to do and see. If our goal is to get our students excited about Israel, then what teacher in their right mind would pull out a textbook to teach Israel?

Textbooks sometimes get a bad wrap. Some educators are afraid of them because they think that teacher will have their students read them out loud. Some teachers don’t like them because they are afraid it takes away their freedom and flexibility. All of those can be valid concerns. But we make textbooks because we believe in them. This essay is designed to explain how we imagine our textbooks being used, and to illustrate how textbooks can be part of engaging, interesting, and exciting experiential learning.

Textbooks, good text books, offer a lot of advantages in today’s congregational school environment:

Teaching Israel without Politics Probably Isn’t Possible

One of the “big ideas” that is at the root of our Israel curricular work is:

“Israel education should not reflect a political point of view but should provide information on those issues that ideological points of view focus on.”

In other words, teachers should not teach Israel from a specific political point of view (e.g. Meretz or Likkud) but need to help students to understand both the actions of Israel and the rhetoric against Israel. This means that it is not the job of the teacher to say either, “Israel should not return any of the territories,” or “Israel should give back all of the territories.” Rather, in teaching Israel in most contexts, it is impossible to avoid the word “territories.”

For us, the real question is “How can we teach the real Israel while at the same time building a loving connection?” What do we do about politics, territories, terrorists, and inequality, when at the same time we want our students to think of Israel as their spiritual homeland?

As we’ve developed our most recent Israel materials — notably Whole School Israel and Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter — we’ve given a lot of thought to this issue, and e’ve identified two distinct challenges. First, teaching Israel is problematic because our students see Israel as a problematic place, and in the end, those problems are unavoidable. Second, teaching Israel is problematic because our students (and their families, perhaps) are apathetic. Here are our thoughts on addressing these challenges.

Want to make Israel engaging and exciting? Give your students 3D glasses.

This week, we’re announcing the publication of a new kind of Israel textbook, Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter.

We’re proud of it because it’s beautiful, filled with gorgeous pictures of eretz Yisrael and amazing maps drawn by a master cartographer. We’re also proud of the activities in the book, and of its ease of use.

But we’re most proud of the fact that it presents a three-dimensional look at Israel.

Recently, I wrote about teaching the “real” Israel with an Israel curriculum that has to do two things. First it has to model love for Israel through the way it covers the subject. This is not a social studies text; it is a family history. Second, one must admit that Israel struggles with problems.

Teaching the real Israel is challenge enough. But we also deal with another problem. How do we make Israel—a country thousands of miles away and a world apart from our North American Jewish selves—engaging, interesting, and exciting for our students?

When We Teach Israel, There’s Often a Gap

For the past couple of years, we’ve been thinking a lot at Torah Aura about Israel curriculum. In a number of our discussions and brainstorming sessions, we’ve come up against something that we like to call The Gap.

The Gap doesn’t sell jeans. (That’s a different Gap.) Our Gap is about how American Jews think about Israel.

American Jews seem to have only one of two opinions about Israel—and the gap makes designing material on Israel and teaching Israel difficult.