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.

It is Good to Have a Jewish National Enquirer

Somehow I am on the list that receives a free newspaper called WJD, the World Jewish Digest, that is the tabloid journalism of Jewish life. Earlier this year they did a story on how Hebrew Schools can never work that featured an opening salvo about a ten year old who literally had to be dragged kicking and screaming from his car into the synagogue because the Hebrew School situation was so oppressive. It never asked the obvious questions, “Was he be bullied?” “Did something happen at home?” “Was their some dramatic event that had so embarrassed him that entering was traumatic?” It just never faced the truth that ten year olds are usually not so freaked out about a schooling event that they would resort to this kind of behavior. In short, no one ever asked why, they just left us with Hebrew Schools are so bad that some kids need to be dragged in kicking and screaming. Good journalism!

This week I got an issue with a cover story that asks, “Is Enviornmentalism a Jewish Issue?” They staged a debate on the “No” side is Edward Bernard Glick who manages to confirm our worst stereotypes of Orthodoxy today. He manages to say, “In this 21st century–when intermarriage is rife, when even Jews who marry other Jews have a negative birthrate, when United States Jewery is declining in numbers, percentages, prestige and power, when Islam seeks to subjugate all other faiths and the Koran preaches that “the unbelievers are your inveterate enemies”; when Iran threatens Israel with nuclear annihilation; when European Jews face levels of antisemitism not seen since the days of Adolf Hitler–American Jewry must remember and reorder its priorities constantly.

Global warming is not a greater threat to Jews than Islamic terror. Using longer-lasting light bulbs is not on a par wth putting a mezuzah on your doorpost…”

Forget the fact that this is bad Judaism and a bad path towards the very Judaism he is concerned with saving. When his spiritual home in Brooklyn is underwater, when Jerusalem is beach front property, his arguments will be academic. But, what bothers me most is that this gives Orthodoxy a bad name. We have for most Jews–and most Jews are his target–Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal– the conclusion that Orthodox Jews are Crazy Fundamentalist, Racist Jewry. He speaks poorly for his argument–and by sharing this as a valid Jewish position, an equally valid choice, WJD reduces itself to the level of publications that report Alien sightings and babies with two heads. It saddens me, because the tradition has a lot to offer non-Orthodox Jews who can’t help, like me, be offended by this article. The anti-Moslem racism is unforgivable, the lack of clear understanding of ecological mitzvot shameful, and his dismissive nature towards all issues but the “saving of the Jewish people” will drive more Jews away. I am really sorry that seems to have become the ubiquitous Jewish publication in America. I rather read about the Satmayr Rebbe being secretly an alien from Pluto (even if it is no longer a planet).

Gris

The Future’s So Bright

Synagogue Schools are experiencing a crises of faith. Just about everyone believes that they are “broken” and that a big fix is needed. Usually, that fix is imagined to be a “process” fix where words like “camp-like” emerge. We at Torah Aura have long argued that it is a change in “content” that is most needed. Recently, in conversations with Josh, I have come to a different conclusion. Synagogue Schools aren’t broken, American Jewish life is. It isn’t the school, but the Judaism they are teaching that has the problem.

We know a couple of things. There is indeed a great movement towards synagogue renewal. Rock and Roll services, early study sessions, Syn-a-plex and dozen other initiatives are busy reinventing communal events in synagogues. We have meditation services, healing services, early Shabbat services and a lot of ther innovations that seem to be making a difference for in those places that implement them. In addition, the universe of alternative minyanim and other innovative Jewish programming like Storahtelling and Reboot are also succeeding. When you look in the right places there is a lot of dynamic Jewish life in America. Most of this never makes it to the ordinary synagogue in the ordinary suburb.

But, schools have a different problem. Underneath these technical innovations that are shifting the synagogue marketplace, there are actually tectonic shifts. The meaning of Judaism is changing. Let me give you a few examples. For people who go to healing services (and I am not one) there is a great new belief that prayer and other religious activities can make a huge personal difference. This is very different from the public belief that services are good social and cultural gatherings. For those engaged in the Reform Movements great innovation, the Saturday morning  Torah  study group–there is an innate transformation from passive participantion to active control of the learning. As opposed to “I can listen and evaluate a sermon,” we now have “I can shape the meaning of the Torah that all of us are learning together.” For those involved in the best of family events (and we are not talking about the coloring a pillow case with the Shema for the third grade every year kind of program) there is a renewed sense of the power and importance of family.

There is a bright future for religious schools, just as there is a bright future for American Jewish life, once we begin to think about the Judaism we are teaching. Once the sense of ownership that has been given in all these synagogue reformations and all of these alternative settings, are transfered into the learning that goes on in the classroom–then success is only a step or two away. But the question we really need to ask is simply, “Is the Judaism we are teaching the Judaism that our learners need.” Given the realities of a larger community that is intermarried, unaffiliated, and operates out of the “sovereign self,” there is a great need to go far beyond time shifts, sitting on floors, and technology–towards asking ontological questions about the actual Judaism we are sharing.

Once we do that, I am going into the sunglass business.

The David Wolpe and Craig Taubman Extravaganza

Sinai Temple in Los Angles rain a great Shabbat morning service this Shabbat morning. If you came before nine you witness a very nice Bat Mitzvah. David Wolpe gave a three story sermon worth quoting:

STORY ONE: The Kotsker Rebbe answered the question of how he became a Hasidic Rebbe by saying, “There was  this old man in my village who told stories.” Asked, “Was he a good story teller?” The Kotsker answered, “He was a simple man. He told what he knew and I took what I needed.”

STORY TWO: Woody Allen said, “We are at a crossroad and one way is dead and destruction and the other way is despair and anguish. We much choose carefully.”

STORY THREE: Winston Churchill’s grandfather went to a formal dinner. He was asked, “Who were your ancesters.:” The woman who asked was checking out how important he was based on his legacy. The grandfather answered, “Madam, I am an ancestor not a descendant.

Let’s see if you can work out the the sermon (about Israel) from the stories.

Craig did one Shabbat Morning, with his band, an adult choir, a kid’s choir, two cantors, an Israeli singing star, and a Yom Kippur side crowd. Everything changed at 11:00 AM. when hundreds of people walked in, the back wall went up, and the sanctuary crowd swelled to a Kol Nidre crowd. Lots of kids, teenagers, older adults on walkers, everyone. Here in an ordinary Shabbat morning in May–in celebration of the State of Israel–a rock show sized crowd filled a sanctuary and joined in singing and clapping.

In an era when “no one is coming” and we seem to be leaking membership and crowds, Sinai Temple, Craig and Rabbi Wolpe, have figured out how to recreated Judaism as major experience. They know how to make sacred moments. This is a time when the Conservative movement is still discussing the halakhic ramification of tuning guitar strings. There is a lesson to be learned here.

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.

The Reports of Hebrew School’s Death are Greatly Exaggerated

The word is on the street, “Hebrew School is useless.” While the forces that be have done their best to render the Hebrew School impotent by (a) dropping its hours below the minimum needed, (2) not providing it with sufficient funds, (c) not developing adequate training vehicles for staff, and (d) refusing to treat it with respect, the Hebrew school is alive and making a difference.

Let’s take a simple example. A Hebrew school that used to have an excellent reputation reports that a majority of its fourth and fifth graders are failing to retain the majority of Hebrew and Tefillah material they have been taught. Other curricular areas are being reduced to allow extra drill of “Hebrew reading.” The secondary result will be an expansion of the number of students who will receive extra tutoring to help them keep pace. In some schools a large percentage of the students are “on tutoring.” The next step for this process is logically on line tutoring. It is both cheaper and more flexible. From there it is just a short ride down the slippery slope to replacing Hebrew school with on-line learning. Irony here, is that the teachers are not to blame, the curriculum is not to blame, even the parents commitment is not to blame — the villain here is a compromise made with the devil by all of those parties. They’ve all made a compromise to lower their standards enough to please the lowest common denominator. It’s a cycle that seems to go round and round.

Given this vicious cycle it is important to keep our eye on the ball.