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.”

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.

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.