Can We Change the System?

Fascinating article on eJewishPhilanthropy, "The Religion You Don't Believe in I Don't Believe in Either" by Dr. Phil Robinson in response to the Pew Study. He raises great points, especially about the nature of teaching religion vs. religious behavior (isn't it really about the pursuit of the sublime).

My question is with regard to the present institutional infrastructure - can they really change to the times?

A Teacher's Worst Fear?

I recently read this well written article by Ari Margolies in TabletMag titled Taking Off My Tefillin.

It is honest and telling of the inner workings of a struggling young man with faith (who will probably go on to be a fine journalist/author).  There is currently a honest and somewhat snarky conversation on Lookjed on Yeshiva Education and Long Term Observance which raises the perspective of parents, teachers, and administrators.

One comment worth sharing from Avi Billet:

I've noted for many years that yeshiva high schools like to boast where their graduates are either accepted or go to university. I'd be interested to see a five-year follow-up boast of how many of those kids still consider themselves observant. I am sure the numbers will not be even close to even. 

As educators, how do we share a long term spiritual mission in digestible and mundane pedagogical encounters.  The school year has ended or is wrapping up this week, but let's face the hard questions - how do we measure our successes and failures?  

Staying in the Tefilla Spot

I had the tremendous honor and pleasure to hear Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Yisrael Meir Lau speak a few weeks ago in my shul.  For those of you who who do not know Rav Lau's story, I strongly encourage you to read his auto-biography, Out of the Depths; it was the best book that I read last year and you will not regret it.

One point that sincerely struck me from his Dvar Torah, directed to the bar-mitzvah boy, his older brother's youngest grand-son, was as on the following pasuk (Tehilim 24):

 מִי-יַעֲלֶה בְהַר-יְהוָה; וּמִי-יָקוּם, בִּמְקוֹם קָדְשׁוֹ.

Who shall ascend into the mountain of the LORD? 

and who shall stand in His holy place?

The challenge for teaching a child is not just to push them into a spiritual lifestyle, to accept the mission of being Jewish - this is the emphasis of the question of "who will ascend the mountain if Gd?".  Rather it should be to teach children how to reside in a spiritual forum, to exist in a world of struggle for balance between the material and spiritual, the modern and the ancient, and the have the tradition and tools present to be an active agent for Hashem.

Some educators today, or more factualy educational institutions, are focused on the tactics to be religions, to be affiliated, to be passionate, or to be able to daven in the main minyan.  Rav Lau's message was to realize that we must have the greater goal ever present.

Reading the rest of the perek of tehillim only strengthens this point:

  נְקִי כַפַּיִם,    וּבַר-לֵבָב:  אֲשֶׁר לֹא-נָשָׂא לַשָּׁוְא נַפְשִׁי;    וְלֹא נִשְׁבַּע לְמִרְמָה.

  יִשָּׂא בְרָכָה, מֵאֵת יְהוָה;    וּצְדָקָה, מֵאֱלֹהֵי יִשְׁעוֹ.

 זֶה, דּוֹר דֹּרְשָׁו;    מְבַקְשֵׁי פָנֶיךָ יַעֲקֹב סֶלָה.

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not taken My name in vain

and hath not sworn deceitfully

He shall receive a blessing from Hashem, and righteousness from the God of his salvation

Such is the generation of them that seek after Him, that seek Thy face, even Jacob. Selah

May we be worthy to raise such a generation. 

Finding Your Prayer Voice

So I hope that you had a prayerful Rosh Hashana and did not solely measure your davening experience on the time that your service concluded.

One of the big themes that I personally thought about was centered around the shofar and the word "קול" or "voice".  Voice and shofar are often linked in the verses cited in the musaf section and it is pretty obvious to think of voice within the entire concept of prayer.  Even the big there elements that are advised by the liturgy to remove the potential evil decree, "Teshuva, Tefilla, u'Tzedaka - Repentance, Prayer, and Charity", need a voice to enable them.  The Rambam writes that one who repents but has not verbally confessed the sin has done teshuva.   Tefilla is simply a verbal expression of one's inner most desires, whether we move our lips to our silent prayer or sing and scream aloud with the chazan.  Finally, tzedaka - giving charity gives voice to those who are needy and helps balance the burdens within a society.

I think that for parents and educators, our goal is to allow our children to discover their own voice within our value system.  Not to just mimic lessons learned in school or opinions overheard at the dinner table, I want my students to feel an authentic call to daven and know what they need to bring to this moment.  This is a mature goal and I think that a synagogue is a perfect crucible for it.

My diagnosis on why so many young people prefer to hang around outside the shul, on the playground or in the 'groups' is because they do not feel this authentic call to prayer, with or without the traditional liturgy.  It is my prayer for the upcoming year that I can share more resources and successful practices on how to engages this population.  Here's to a great year!

Guest Post: The Vietnam of Day School Ed

You read the title correctly!  This post is authored by Michael Feuer, who is on the faculty of Sulam Yaakov and whom I recently met teaching a course titled Prayer: the inner journey that leads outward.  I welcome your reactions.  

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The Vietnam of Day School Education

When I heard a respected educator apply these words to prayer, my jaw dropped. But after the shock faded, the precision of the phrase started to play on my imagination. Given that I share the sorrow and fear over the “field situation” which provoked the comment, but not its hopelessness, I figure some reflection is in order,  so – why Vietnam?!

Educators and community members rule the day, unengaged students rule the night. Our children are not absent from prayer; we can make a minyan and the shuls are full on Shabbat. But we grade prayer as attendance, and praise the appearance of focus. It’s true, sitting quietly is a praiseworthy habit in today’s culture. But we are not teaching them to cultivate silence, but to pretend to say words.

What are we fighting for anyway? Only a real soul-search after Gd and a lot of prayer can answer this question. How many teachers and parents have a mature, living relationship with Gd and an active engagement with our soul? How many of us find strength in prayer and have tasted its pleasure? If these are absent from us, or not deemed relevant,  then what are we asking from our students? Teacher’s prayer groups are the weapon of the next generation.

In context of the liturgy, this conversation becomes a minefield. Tracing a path through questions of doctrine, obligation, authority and tradition without losing your company seems hopeless. And yet, these very issues form the backbone of the Eighteen Blessings. Perhaps prayer is the primary context created for this struggle and we should encourage our students to take the fight there. If they don’t feel safe struggling with Gd, Torah and Am Yisrael then what kind of relationship can they build?

In asymmetrical warfare, victory is not achieved through force. Prayer is not an act to be imposed, it is a lifestyle to be cultivated. Teaching it is a battle of hearts and minds. We must invest in the context of prayer as well as its content. This means devoting more time for praying and more resources for learning. It means developing a model of mutual awareness and spiritual mentorship between all members of a school – staff, faculty and students. At its core prayer is the pursuit of relationship, and as such is the ultimate communal effort.

Awakening the emotions in service of prayer is essential. Are our classrooms vessels where students feel safe to share their hearts? To we encourage journaling, spiritual chevruta, giving and receiving of blessing?

The siddur is a complex and powerful tool for awakening the soul, connecting to Am Yisrael and turning to Gd. It must be engaged as an instrument to be mastered, and not as a book to be read. Repetition becomes practice when the students sense they are picking up a relationship where it left off each time they pray, and just not doing it all again. 

The attempt to reduce prayer to a deliverable educational product is bankrupt. It must be replaced by a critical dialogue meant to cultivate consciousness over the question of prayer. In order to accomplish this we have to be prepared to take risks, and even lose battles. But that’s what you do when you’re committed to winning the war. 

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Michael Feuer has rabbinic ordination from the Sulam Yaakov Yeshiva, under the guidance of Rav Dov Channan and has spent much of the past two years thinking intensively about the topic of tefilla. Since making aliyah in 2001, he has been Program Director of a post-high school yeshiva, taught history, Jewish thought and Bible in several Jerusalem yeshivot and midrashot and halacha at the Pardes Institute.

Is There an Age to Start Growing your Spiritual Side?

I think this is a fair question to ask.

This thought was instigated by the reading/hearing of the weekly Torah portion in synagogue.  In Bamidbar, also known as the book of Numbers, we learn about the census of the Israelites in the wilderness.  The criteria for counting the people really is for a military purpose in that the desert was a staging ground for the eventual and supposed swift move to Israel.  Further, the essential criteria is for men "from the age of 20, all those that went to fight" (1:3) was  clarifying who could go out to war.

The tribe of Levi was not counted with their brethren, and were selected out for a different purpose - to serve in the Mishkan (the travelling Tabernacle that was the precursor to the Temple).With a careful reading, one can see that the Levites are counted from one month and older, yet they will only serve in the Mishkan from age 30 to age 50.  Thus their training and education for their spiritual burden begins at a much earlier age as well as their actual career of practice is limited to a period of peek performance.  Juxtapose this to the military men where there is no specific criteria beyond their age (note even physicality), there is a stark difference in their call to duty.

I first digested this point in reading Gideon Weitzman's Sparks of Light a few years ago.  Weitzman, a delightful teacher and scholar on the philosophy of Rav Kook, highlights this differing roles between the national entity and spiritual component and argues that this set up was to guard a balance for the nation to "survive and thrive".

One of the most influential books that I have ever read was As a Driven Leaf by Milton Sternberg - which if you haven't read, then what are you waiting for. The book is a historical fictitious account of the life of Elisha Ben Abuye. Sternberg, in sharing the travails of the protagonist, cites the enigmatic Mishna in Pirkei Avit chapter 4:20:

Elisha the son of Abuye would say: One who learns Torah in his childhood, what is this comparable to? To ink inscribed on fresh paper. One who learns Torah in his old age, what is this comparable to? To ink inscribed on erased paper.

Connecting to the idea presented in the beginning of the post - must spiritual people be nurtured for a longer time and thus before they may be corrupted from complex or negative thoughts?  Is there a latent message in the text promoting the notion of Tabula Rasa?

As a parent AND teacher, tis a daunting task - to raise moral and good children who will strive to care for their world and the people in their community.  And we know that we have to start at a young age to impart habits and values and not just wait to our young people have the physical maturity to "take" responsibility" (I have previously written about the issue with the age of bar/bat mitzvahs). But how can we properly prepare to shape the soulful side and properly measure our effectiveness?

Fasting for?

Previously I have explored the concept of tefilla and fasting and wanted to take a different angle today.  Yesterday was the Fast of Esther which leads many people to associate the purpose of the fast to be united at least symbolically with Esther's three day fast before she enters the King's chamber to make her plea for her people (chapter 4).  This is not the case as even wikipedia notes:

The 13th of Adar was a fast day for the warriors while going out to battle, as it is believed to have been customary to fast during the battle in order to gain divine favor.

Rather than explore why some educators avoid emphasizing discussions of power and war with modern audiences, I find it worth noting that ancient Jewish warriors seriously davened to gain favor in their wars even to the point of going out to war in a state of fast - I have a hard time just going to work without eating the whole day...

There is a serious disconnect (beyond the mind/body) between our prayers and actions highlighting how far the concept of fasting is falling out of favor, especially on 'minor' fast days.  Mainstream Jewry (and by that I really mean a majority in number) knows about the big one - Yom Kippur - and might be familair with Tisha B'Av, but the minor ones are really seen as minor in significance (and not in degree of fasting).  There are some people even ask about the relevance to fast on Tisha B'av if there is a State of Israel.  In my humble opinion, this is partly because of a change in traditional  ideology (if there ever was unified ideology), a lacking in appreciation for Jewish literacy/history, and the fact that fasting is seen as an 'outdated' practice.  As educators, I think we need to address this issue and its relevance to how we build an identity around tefilla and spiritual growth.

Do your students seem more focused or less focused in tefilla on a fast day?

Do you discuss with your students how to rise above the hunger pangs to better strive to connect?  What techniques do you use?

Have you had a voluntary fast day in your school for a special occasion?  How was the reaction by the student body? Was that tefilla unique?

Should We Take God More Seriously?

For those of you the read or peruse Haaretz online, you might have noticed a regular paid advertisement stuck into the heart of the page taken out by the Shalom Hartman Institute. I personally never click on advertisements (but apparently people do otherwise google and facebook would not be so successful) but I clicked on it last week.

The reason I clicked was that I noticed the name and face of Tal Becker, a fellow at of the Shalom Hartman Institute, who I heard speak for the first time at a symposium just a few short weeks ago (turns out that we are neighbors as well).  He is a pretty good orator and has a good sense of the key issues facing Israel and Judaism today.  His present piece he writes about "Taking God (a little More) Seriously".

Near the end of his essay he states:

Imagine if this were the way religion and religious leaders were recognized in the public arena. Imagine if bringing God into the public square meant a supreme concern for the welfare of the collective, rather than the restricted needs of separate religious communities. 

I find this point worth highlighting because I think this is a negative byproduct of a poor educational system and reflects many of my concerns about the state of tefilla today.  Many young people look to or are influenced by popular culture for spiritual icons and/or role models.  Where are the religious leaders that can offer an engaging sense of identity for growing, modern adults?

When I attended an Idan Raichel Project a few years ago, and the audience sang along with the band to his poetic verses from Jewish liturgy, a felt a great, sad disconnect - that this music band had the ability to cause such a spiritual high and this feeling is rarely felt in a shul (perhaps only during a Friday night service).  Who are the rabbis and teachers that inspire greater faith and stretch their activities into the public arena? 

The Best Digital Siddur?

The following is a guest post on the Hirhurim - Musings blog by Rabbi Michael J. Broyde titled: Building a Better Siddur: An E-Siddur for the Twenty-First Century.

Considering how many people I see fidgeting on the phones in shul, either using them as a siddur or a distraction from the tefilla, I think Broyde's piece here gives a good review of the maven's needs for today.  My favorite line from the post is the following:

An e-siddur can create a prayer environment much more esthetically pleasing than any printed prayer book ever can be, if only because it can give you the right prayers in the right order every day, with instructions tailored to its owner’s current location and customs, while changing every day with the changes of the Jewish calendar.

Sounds to me like an educator in the classroom.

Improving and Evaluating Tefilla in High Schools

Responding to a query on the Lookjed list about experimenting with an explanatory tefilla in high schools, Zvi Grumet wrote the following:

Years ago I ran an explanatory/exploratory tefillah. It was mandatory, not optional. Some students appreciated it and wanted to stay, others found it curious and thought-provoking, while others outright hated it. That was to be expected. There were considerable limitations – we were bound by halakhic requirements as well as by time (our tefillah could not be longer than the school’s regular minyan.) The purpose was three-fold – to slow down the pace enough that students could actually pay attention to the words, to allow a few minutes for discussion of ideas related to general issues in tefillah, and to shake-up the experience so that it was not rote. Some of the activity was designed to make students think (there was unfortunately no time for discussion) while there were clearly other activities designed to create tefillah experiences.

As I wrote in a Ten Daat article many years ago, much depends on the kinds of resources (time, space, latitude, etc.) that the school is willing to invest.

I think the most poignant point in Zvi Grumet's comments is the last paragraph (sentence) - indeed, isn't it the limitations of each school's resources that really dictate the dynamic potential of their student's tefilla experience? 

Another respondent to the query was Chana Zweiter who makes a sharp comment about listening to your students to evaluate the success of your tefilla program: 

I would like to share with you comments that yeshiva high school students made after participating in our Ohr Hadash Tefila workshops. The first comment was made by a 9th grade boy during our reflection after one workshop. I asked the students, “What have you learned here about yourself? What have you learned about tefilla?” One student responded,” I learned that I could relate to tefilla better if I had more time to think about it before and after I davened. The trouble is that we don’t have that time in school.” The other comments were made by 10th grade girls. I came back to the school a few months after the workshop to assess the effect that the one workshop had on the girls’ davening. One girl answered that she kept the work sheet that we used in her siddur and looked at it before she davened. “My tefilla has really changed because I focus on it before I daven..” Most of the girls said that “you can’t just have one workshop. We are busy with so many things that the effect wears off unless you keep it up.” 

I think it’s critical to listen to these reflections when implementing tefilla programs. They are telling us how important time, reflection and an ongoing process is to tefilla. We have used the strategy of working with select groups that Rabbi Kaminetsky proposes (not yet with our Ohr Hadash program) when the object is that they become mentors for their peers, the other students. Our approach is based on the positive effects that peer tutoring can have and on a constructivist approach to education where we begin to pave the way and they learn through their own exploration and constructing. And it is based on Rav Kook’s approach to tefilla, making it meaningful by connecting it to our daily lives. We connect it to social and emotional competencies. It’s a spiral effect – the tefilla affects how they develop these skills and the skills affect their tefilla. 

Postmodern Tefila Tip #2

In my ongoing reflections on how to evaluate and improve tefilla in schools, I came across an unrelated comment by Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter - aka the Sfat Emet. One of the themes that he often riffs on, no matter the topic, is based on Psalms 34: 15:

סוּר מֵרָע, וַעֲשֵׂה-טוֹב;    בַּקֵּשׁ שָׁלוֹם וְרָדְפֵהוּ.

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.

The Sfat Emet denotes the difference between actively refraining from evil actions or thoughts and the movements that direct one towards goodness and effectiveness.  Accordingly, a person needs to regularly examine one's deeds and actions to remove any negative attributes toward the goal of personal improvement; such a tactic only brings a person to a neutral state.  This defensive approach to the world differs from one that seeks engagement and enactment.

In my humble opinion, one of the significant differences between liberal democratic values and Judaism is precisely this point - the obligation to refrain from harmful actions versus a command to be an active participant in society.  There are rules in society about what you cannot do, or when you can drive or vote, but no obligation except to pay taxes.  In Judaism, while there are negative commandments (thou shall not), there are many active mitzvot that propel are person into the world to do good, and hopefully spread peace.

With this Sfat Emet dichotomy in mind, I wish to frame tefilla education according to skill based vs. spiritual development.  Often students are taught just the skills in order that they know how to appropriately act if they were to arrive in a synagogue.  There needs to be more emphasis on what can motivate and excite our young people to be agents of positive prayer.  Bringing students to a parve spiritual state just isn't doing it.

Teaching Spirituality in School

The following article (from the lookjed list)  is thought provoking and the link to the post has several interesting reactions and comments from educators around the world.  Additionally, I think it is good to expose the readers here to Aryeh Ben David, an experienced educator himself who has started Ayeka - Jewish Spiritual Education.

I invite you to share comments - is this practical for your school? Or do you think this better for 'informal educational' environments?

Creative Solutions to Education Challenges - Spiritual Education
by Aryeh Ben David posted on 9 August 2011

There is a problem in Jewish education. Many if not most Jewish educators are aware of this problem. It is a problem that will not be solved by a change in the syllabus. It is a problem that will not be solved by developing more knowledgeable educators. It is not a problem of pedagogy or content.

It is a problem of disconnectedness. Students are not personally connecting to what they are learning. It is a problem that exists on the day school level as well as in advanced yeshiva learning. It is not a problem of the mind. It is a problem of the heart.

This problem did not simply appear. It is the product of an approach that views education as a mind-to-mind experience. It is a product of an approach whose goal is to convey to the student masses of content, regardless of how much of this the student emotionally connects to and/or integrates into his life. It is an approach which lacks sufficient personal relevance, personal meaning, touching of the hearts and/or impassioning the student.

There is another approach. An approach that was, in fact, favored by the Hassidic masters, Rav Kook, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and others. It is an approach that is based on the wisdom of the Kabbalah, on the understanding that there are three primary voices of the soul - the nefesh, the ruach, and the neshama. These voices are expressed through the powers of the mind (neshama), the heart (ruach), and the body (nefesh). For education to be truly effective it has to access and harmonize these three voices of the soul of the student. It is an approach of one whole person to another whole person, of mind & heart & body to mind & heart & body (see Courage to Teach, p. 4, by Parker Palmer, contemporary leader in educational philosophy. "To chart the inner landscape fully, three important paths must be taken - intellectual, emotional, and spiritual - and none can be ignored").

How does this approach work?

The mind is engaged. A subject is studied. Critical and rigorous thinking is  involved.

The heart is engaged. A safe and supportive environment is created in which the student can personally relate to the material studied. An environment bereft of cynicism, sarcasm, or judgment. The Talmud states "A person only learns from the place that his/her heart desires." This safe environment opens one's heart to learning, and promotes active listening of the participant both to his/her self and to others. The students are invited to express and share in pairs how s/he connects to what has been learned.

The body is engaged. An experiential workshop enables the student to take this mind & heart experience and express it through various media, including art, creative writing, drama, or movement. The goal here is not the performance. Rather the aim is to physically actualize what has been heretofore abstract. This tangible experience serves to concretize what the mind and heart have experientially internally.

The Results:

Individual connectedness: A deep personal connectedness to whatever subject has been learned, an impassioned learner. Students begin to realize that Judaism is not just about learning content, it is not just about knowing things, but that the deep wisdom of Judaism can impact and enhance their lives.

Group connectedness: The sharing with others coheres the whole group and begins to foster a community of listening, caring, meaningfulness and passion. Torah becomes Torat Chayim.

This approach has already been tried with well over 1500 students during the last two years with outstanding success. It is suitable for timeframes of 3-hour sessions, day-long seminars, and Shabbatonim. Ultimately, the goal of these sessions is to impact students, to begin to create a community focusing on spiritual growth, and to train Jewish educators and professionals to be able to facilitate these seminars on their own. To date, we have run seminars focusing on spirituality, community, chesed, and the holidays. This approach, however, is suitable for any subject or theme.

Getting Beyond "Formal vs. Informal" Education

This is a follow up article/resource on the topic of education in general, written by Jacob Cytryn in the RAVSAK Journal.

I think the article raises solid points and should empower educators to apply the same methodology to approach tefilla.

Can Education Alone Save the Jewish People

Recommended Reading from The Canadian Jewish News - By Robert Eli Rubenstein.  The only question I ask on this article is how can we evaluate our educational approach and measure the results?

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Can Education Alone Save the Jewish People?

Since biblical times, we Jews have been a famously contrary lot, and the erosion of traditional values in the modern period has only deepened the divisions. Yet there is a single article of faith proclaimed with startling unanimity and certitude by all who profess to care about the survival of the Jewish people.

From one end of the broad Jewish spectrum to the other, from secular humanists to the most rigidly devout, Jewish education is promoted as the key to securing the Jewish future. In last week’s CJN, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman added his powerful voice to the chorus. As he put it, “Nothing is more crucial to advancing this goal [of ensuring the continuation of a strong Jewish identity] than Jewish education. At all levels, from the earliest age in the home, through formal and informal education at all levels, there is no alternative to exposing the next generation to Jewish values, traditions and identity.”

I began entertaining doubts about the conventional wisdom regarding Jewish education years ago, and these have only increased as I raised my own children and became ever more involved in the lay leadership of the Jewish schools they attended. Let me make clear that I am not saying I no longer value Jewish education. Rather, what I mean is that in the distant past, the lives of our people were suffused with a critical mass of Jewish content, and this preserved in them a strong sense of self as Jews. Today, however, the great majority of Jews wish to replace the actual practice of Judaism with mere knowledge of Judaism. As a consequence of this shift, we tend to have overblown and unrealistic expectations regarding the efficacy of Jewish education in building Jewish identity.

In 1986, the Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario region, commissioned a “Task Force on Assimilation, Intermarriage and Jewish Identity”, which I was privileged to co-chair. Following an intensive investigative process, the taskforce issued a report setting forth recommendations for counteracting the erosion of affiliation among Jews. Looking back, I am struck by the fact that almost all the recommendations involved promoting Jewish education in one form or another. In the years since, our community’s deep conviction that Jewish education is the panacea for assimilation has continued to grow, as reflected by its ever-expanding investment in Jewish educational facilities and resources. Yet parallel to this trend and notwithstanding our heroic efforts, we have witnessed a relentless increase in the rate of attrition.

Some years ago, I was visiting in Borough Park, a Brooklyn neighbourhood heavily populated by readily identifiable chassidic Jews. While strolling along the main street on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I came across a group of people wearing baseball caps and clutching cameras, listening to a tour guide’s animated explanation of the significance of the different types of garb worn by the local residents. I was intrigued to learn that these were members of a synagogue adult education group from Long Island, who had come to catch a glimpse of how their ancestors in eastern Europe lived long ago. They were no doubt having a fine educational experience learning about their ancient heritage, but this does not mean they had any interest in living significantly Jewish lives themselves. It is the difference between being a spectator at a sporting event and being a player: the self-perceptions and actual commitments of the two are simply incomparable. And if the goal of “Jewish education” is to ensure that there will be Jews in the world of the future, no one could seriously argue that the photo-snapping tourists from Long Island were as likely to have Jewish grandchildren as the bemused black-clad chassidim walking by.

Our Jewish community is one of the most affluent, generous, and dedicated in the world, and we are justifiably proud of the wonderful schools and other institutions that we have created. The great majority of parents I know who send their children to day schools wish them to be Jewishly knowledgeable, so that one day they will be in a position to make informed decisions about how they will choose to fulfil themselves as Jews. Deep down, they hope their children will ultimately vindicate their own life choices by choosing to be just as non-observant as they themselves are. Many are the stories of day school parents, including even some leaders of the community, who have called the principal to complain indignantly about a particular teacher who “brainwashed” their child into requesting that the family start having Shabbat dinners together on Friday nights, at an hour when the parents customarily go out with their friends.

I have acquired from my own Holocaust-survivor parents an appreciation for the sacred imperative after Auschwitz of transmitting a strong Jewish consciousness to the next generation. Although my parents never attended Jewish schools, which simply did not exist in small prewar European communities, their Jewish identity has always been unwavering and vigorous, absorbed intuitively from the personal example set by their own parents in the family home. Yes, I know, times have changed. For this reason, our challenge today is to identify the success factors of times past and try to make them work in our contemporary situation.

The truth is that it requires very little objective knowledge to live a vibrant Jewish life, and in our increasingly interconnected world, this knowledge is easy to attain. The real issue is the individual Jew’s degree of motivation to seek it out and act on it. I can agree with Lieberman and many others that Jewish literacy is a worthy objective, but on the available evidence, I have my doubts that it necessarily leads to the development of a strong Jewish identity. One can acquire a comprehensive Jewish high school education, one can even become a university professor of Jewish studies, without necessarily forming an emotional commitment to living a Jewish life. The key to forming such a commitment is actually doing the rather simple things one has learned about, and doing them consistently. Such observance can move beyond mere nostalgia or folklore and become an integral part of a person’s being. An individual who embraces an all-encompassing core of Jewish activity is apt to seek a like-minded spouse, and together they will strive to raise children on this model.

A respected Jewish community professional recently told me that she herself did not observe any Jewish rituals because she never had the benefit of a day school education. I responded that it does not take very much education to know how to light Shabbat candles, for example. All that is required is the determination to do it and the ability to strike a match. My ancestors, like hers, knew what they had to do to live richly satisfying Jewish lives, without having enjoyed a formal Jewish education. Clearly, something has changed dramatically. If we truly care about securing the future of the Jewish people, as we profess, we owe it to ourselves to examine what that “something” might be, and what we need to do about it.

The celebrated 19th-century German Jewish bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider was a modern man with modern sensibilities, unwilling to lend credence to any religion, including his own. People would ask him in puzzlement why a totally non-observant Jew had chosen to spend his days cataloguing musty old Jewish books with such loving devotion. His unsettling response was that he saw it as his mission to give Judaism a decent burial. If they wish to avoid being among the pall-bearers, the many present-day Jews who share Steinschneider’s modern sensibilities yet yearn paradoxically for a bright Jewish future, need to discover meaning and satisfaction in the Jewish experience beyond merely being knowledgeable about it.

As we survey the contemporary scene, there is, to be sure, much to cause us consternation. But in all fairness, there is also much to give us hope. In Montreal and Toronto and other hubs of Jewish life, we see young people creating dynamic new communities where they devise innovative, stimulating and joyful new ways to reconnect to their sources and celebrate the age-old treasures of Judaism. Throughout our long and tortuous history, we Jews have rebounded from countless existential crises by pulling together. I am confident that in the end, we shall once again meet the challenge, for “a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

Robert Eli Rubinstein, a Toronto businessman, is the author of An Italian Renaissance: Choosing Life in Canada, which won a 2011 Canadian Jewish Book Award.

The Desire for Jewish Authenticity

The following article titled "The Spiral of Jewish Authenticity" was published last week in Sh'ma, A Journal of Jewish Ideas by Stuart Z. Charme.  I think this is good educational food for the mind and soul, especially considering the last paragraph and the 'breaking news' out on Matisyahu.  It is just hard to be an educator!
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Around the time my daughter turned 16 years old, she cut off most of her thick, long hair for an edgier and hipper look. She began to perform slam poetry, and she announced that she no longer saw herself as Jewish. Being Jewish, she said, just didn’t figure very much in her sense of identity, and she found greater authenticity in performing poetry or doing community service than in reciting Jewish prayers to a deity that neither she nor I believe in.

I was not all that shocked by my daughter’s announcement. Having interviewed dozens of teenagers about their Jewish identities as part of a research project, I knew that teens — much like adults — respond to the fact of being Jewish with feelings ranging from intense pride to utter indifference. I also knew, from following these teens years later, when they were in college, that the meaning of being Jewish had already changed for many of them and would most likely continue to do so throughout their lives. Indeed, as socio-psychologist Bethamie Horowitz and others have pointed out, Jewishness is not a static condition but rather a journey with various twists, turns, and detours along the way. In a similar way, I have described the experience of Jewishness over the course of one’s life as a loose spiral. We circle back to revisit a variety of issues related to Judaism and Jewishness; each time, we approach the experience of Jewishness from new perspectives and with new investments and understandings that emerge in response to other changes in our lives.

For many Jews, the feeling of Jewish authenticity involves a sense of connection to a romanticized or idealized image of the past. Living in or just visiting the land of Israel, enjoying Klezmer music, assuming the lifestyle of an observant Jew, or checking one’s DNA for a “Jewish” marker may provide a sense of unbroken tradition and peoplehood. This idea of authenticity, however, has often been critiqued and deconstructed as an essentialist myth that merely serves to legitimate favored forms of identity while delegitimating others.

Much has also been written (see the March 2011 issue of Sh’ma for several essays on Jewish identity) about the postmodern freedom to “construct” or “invent” Jewish identity in a myriad of ways ranging from contemporary ultra-Orthodoxy to Torah Yoga and Jewish “mindfulness.” And even the notion of “the Jewish people” is less a fixed body with natural boundaries than a continually reimagined community with contested rules and conditions for recognition and membership. It is obvious that claims about authenticity can never really offer a scientific test of purity, a “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval, or a warranty against change. Some of what is now accepted as authentically Jewish will eventually be abandoned and some of what is now rejected will later be reclaimed. In this sense, each individual’s search for Jewish authenticity is a microcosm of the collective process of redefining Judaism at different moments of history.

The desire for Jewish authenticity, therefore, has both retrospective and prospective dimensions. On the one hand, it situates one in relationship to one’s personal and group history; it provides a sense of existential orientation and protection; and it, thereby, offers a provisional home in the world. But the goal of authenticity is simultaneously a warning to be careful of claiming too much certainty at the present moment — recognizing the permanently destabilizing power of the future to shatter and rebuild the foundations of our world in ever-new ways.

For both of these reasons, the issue of Jewish authenticity remains compelling and inescapable. In some ways, authenticity resembles other ultimate human goals like “salvation,” “enlightenment,” or “utopia.” All of these concepts are most useful as ever-receding targets that beckon people to construct identity and community, but also to resist complacent acceptance of the status quo, mechanical repetition of the past, or unquestioned conformity to the consensus of one community at a particular moment in time. There is probably some Zen-like truth to the idea that those who claim most adamantly to have found or achieved Jewish authenticity are also those who lack it in a deeper sense.

Ultimately, what I wish for my daughter is a Jewish journey that is intellectually and psychologically honest, vibrant, and creative; one that values questions more than answers, while avoiding the pitfalls of premature closure and rigidity. I trust that she will discover authentic forms of Jewish expression for herself as she redefines her past and plans for the future. I can’t predict whether slam poetry will be part of that process, but if the singer Matisyahu could use reggae to find a sense of Jewish authenticity for himself, then why not?