The Lights of Chanukah

Chanukah is a time of miracles - but it often seems like a fairy tale or something from long ago.

Imagine if you lived in those times.... would you have believed or followed the rebellion?  If you were  in Jerusalem the year after the war (166) would you kindle the candles to celebrate the newborn holiday?   Would you change your traditional routine to add a new holiday?

As one twitter follower noted last night, similar sentiments are felt today regarding Israel's Independence Day (Yom Ha'atzmut).  Should it be embraced without a divine sign?  How can we celebrate receiving only part of the biblical territory or with such nasty neighbors?  [I think it is worth noting that Yom Ha'atzmut is the first national Jewish Holiday added to the calendar since Chanukah]

I think that too often we take for granted the circumstances of the past and the adversity that was needed to overcome the challenges to effect a significant change.  But looking at the candles tonight, I appreciate it more and it is something that causes me to really understand the meaning of our prayer for  miracles "as they happened long ago, in today's age".

Chag Urim Sameach - Happy Chanukah!

Recommended Blog - Keeping Kids in Shul

The following is reposted from Hirhurim, one the most active blogs at the forefront of Jewish issues and ideas online.  I wanted to share it in full below but encourage you to follow this link to see the original post and the comments posted there.

Here are my two cents:

The author makes a keen accounting of some rabbinical responses to the "problem" with disinterested teens and tefilla and reflect spectrum of reactions.  I appreciate that he is trying to treat the symptoms of this problem and the greater illness - that some kids don't want to come to daven.  The last two paragraphs are as honest as you get on the topic of tefilla.

Keeping Kids In Shul

December 7, 2011

 In a recent issue of Jewish Action (Summer 2011), R. Jay Goldmintz writes about the problem in the Modern Orthodox community of teens who don’t, or don’t want to, attend shul on Shabbos (link). R. Goldmintz offers a few suggestions on how to remedy the situation, which I sum up as: 1) force them to go to shul, 2) use walking to shul as a bonding opportunity, 3) model proper prayer.

I’ll have to take R. Goldmintz’s word because I’m not otherwise aware of the problem he addresses. I’m certainly familiar with teens who do not want to go to shul, or school, or anywhere. I just never imagined that their parents would give them a sustained choice in the matter. There are certain assumed activities in life and going to shul, at least for boys, ranks along with going to school. It’s a given (community customs vary for girls).

In the latest issue of Jewish Action (Winter 2011 – not yet online), a number of communal leaders respond to R. Goldmintz’s article. Dr. Benzion Sorotzkin objects to the idea of forcing kids to go to shul. “When we make harsh demands of our children, our values don’t become internalized.” Yes, but when they don’t even show up, there’s no chance for them to become full members of the community. I think Dr. Sorotzkin and R. Goldmintz are speaking of different kinds of children. Dr. Sorotzkin is warning against forcing, in an overly harsh manner, rebellious teens to attend shul. R. Goldmintz is advising to push lazy teens to shul. I don’t know that they disagree all that much.

R. Daniel Rockoff advocates getting teens involved in the service, either with a special minyan for teens or other, similar methods. That is also a worthy idea that does wonders… for kids who want to lead, or set up, or somehow get involved. As a parent of teenagers, I suspect that quite a few would find it burdensome.

R. Ron Yitzchak Eisenman writes that he is not worried. He is confident that “once these young men become husbands aand fathers, they will be found in shul on Shabbat morning along with the rest of us.” Except, presumably, those who go off the derekh entirely, for whom shul attendance is the least of their religious challenges.

Like R. Rockoff, R. Hershel Billet advocates involving teens in kiddush preparation, leading services, public speaking and otherwise in shul. R. Billet adds that raising a teen must be a partnership between parents, school and shul. They all need to work together to devise a unified prayer curriculum for schools and abbreviated prayer service for teens. I teach my kids what they can skip when they don’t feel like davening — they have to do a minimum. It would be nice for all kids to know that.

R. Dovid Gottlieb shares my puzzlement over teens missing Shabbos shul but agrees that there are many teens who fail to relate properly to prayer. Like other respondents, he points out that many adults face the same challenge. He points out that shuls are the “third line of defense,” after families and schools. His suggestions of involving teens in leading services or something else are similar to R. Rockoff’s and R. Billet’s.

The bottom line is that few of us relate adequately to prayers but we all learn to live with the parts we don’t like and appreciate the parts we do. Some don’t like the rabbi’s sermon; others the leining: others Pesukei Dezimra or the repetition of the Amidah. Regardless, we each are sufficiently mature to recognize our responsibility to attend shul, to deal with what we don’t like, to embrace aspects that speak to us and to make the most of the entire situation.

As we evolve through life, going through many stages of personal successes, crises and changes, we find that we relate differently to all aspects of life. The prayer you mumble quickly today may someday be the only hope you have to keep your family together or to regain strength after the death of a loved one or to articulate your deep gratitude for a personal success. You need to be in shul in order to find those unexpected benefits as you make your way through the ups and downs of life. But try telling that to a teenager.

Justin Bieber and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

I found the following article on a #jedchat conversation on twitter: Justin Bieber and the principal: The real story by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post.  

While this article is not about tefilla, I think it is inspirational story for educators and serves as a necessary reminder about how we cannot discuss teaching to higher level cognitive abilities - the pursuit of self-actualization - without treating the basic needs of our students.  There are many distractions in and around the classroom, and these especially crowd the arena of tefilla.  Below is a diagram of Maslow's theory: 

At first glance, tefilla seems to be a higher order activity -at the top of the pyramid.  But thinking through this theory more it is clear to me that many people daven solely for their physiological needs, or for safety and for all the different components categorized.  I think that davening can be appropriate for each of these levels but it is immensely challenge to teach and practice tefilla with students at various stages of this paradigm.

For me,  I think in terms of tefilla of the reflective ability to reach my personal potential and missions of the Jewish tradition.  This is very much the vision of self-actualization.  However, modeling this for students who are cognitively, emotionally, or socially at a different place can be a recipe for disaster.  

Do You Need to Believe to Daven?

I recently read this awesome controversial educational statement on twitter:

L'hitpalel, usually translated as 'to pray,' actually means to judge/examine oneself. So, it is taught, you don't need to believe in Gd to authentically pray as a Jew. Agree? Disagree? Thoughts?

What are your thoughts on this tweet and how would your students react to this statement?

A Kavanah for Waking Up by Andrew Shaw

In these still, quiet moments,
I am not asleep
and not yet awake.

In the threshold of day and night,
with the mixture of darkness and light,
my body is once again coming to life.

I am reborn, each day,
from the womb of your compassion.
May all of my actions
be worthy of the faith You’ve placed in me.

With words of thanks I’ll greet the dawn.

This was posted by The Open Siddur Project on twitter that also featured a picture with this poem by Andrew Shaw. 

I also recommend you see his translation of Modeh Ani as well.

______________________________________
Correction 22 Dec 2011
Thanks for a diligent reader who follow the links to see that the credit for the picture goes to Ha-Wee titled "Good Morning Sunrise" 

How to Teach Tefilla - Part 1

So this is the million dollar question - how can one succeed to teach kids how to daven and evaluate your results?

I see the following ten variables at play here:

1. The calisthenics of proper prayer - when to move and what gestures are appropriate
2. Symbolism in the physical environment - being comfortable in any minyan
3. The vocabulary of prayer - what are the key trigger words
4. Hebrew
5. Introspection and self-examination
6. Meditation and blocking out mental distractions
7. God 
8. Repetition of ritual performance and maintaining a sense of purpose 
9. Music and training of the ear to the melodies of tefilla
10. Balancing personal needs with communal benefit

Over the next few weeks I will be suggesting resources and ideas for developing these variables and methodology for evaluating their implementation.   

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?