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Our Top-Secret Plan for Jewish Education
By Jewcy Staff / August 13, 2007
Jewish education is terrible in this country (unless you go to day school), so many of us grow up utterly clueless about how to be a Jew. We’re vaguely aware that synagogue attendance is required on two separate occasions in early autumn, and we know pork and gentile boyfriends are supposed to be off-limits, but that’s about the extent of it. And yet foundations spend millions of dollars every year studying why so many young Jews don’t stick with the faith. The dirty truth: Those of us who went to your average half-assed Hebrew School don’t even know there’s a faith to leave behind.
Jewcy doesn’t have any sort of continuity agenda, but we do think it’s ridiculous that so many otherwise smart and curious Jews end up seeing Judaic practice as a series of arcane rites—not just mysterious, but fundamentally unknowable. Even if we want to become better Jews, we don’t know how to do it.
Ironically, it’s never been easier to learn about Judaism: The internet is full of sites like Aish and MyJewishLearning that exist primarily to fill these educational gaps. After years of being force-fed propaganda instead of information, though, we’re often too leery to even bother clicking on a link, lest we wind up on the wrong end of yet another lecture about continuity. (This may be lame, and it may suggest a lack of commitment to acquiring knowledge, but that does not make it any less true.)
So here’s the painfully sincere bit: We kind of want you guys to learn stuff. We know, it’s subversive, luring you in with promises of porn star interviews and political commentary and then secretly slipping in some old-fashioned Jewish education, like a pill at the bottom of a sundae. But at least we’re admitting it, right? Below, the best of our top-secret Jewish education project so far.
THE PERFECT JEW
Jon Papernick is your typical Social Distortion-loving goateed writer type. His fiction tends to revolve around the Jewish experience, but he’s never been observant himself. We sent him on a quest to learn to be the best Jew he can be. So far, he’s announced his intentions to the world by wearing a kippah, cleansed himself of his secular skepticism at the mikvah, and rested from his labors on Shabbat. (He’s also brushed up his negotiating skills, but that essay’s a little less holy than the others.) If you’re in a rush, skip the stories and go straight to the tips: How to win any argument (again, not so religious) and how to get the most out of Shabbat.
FAITHHACKER
On our religion blog, the product of an actually substantive Jewish education breaks it down for the rest of us. Tamar Fox has tackled ways to keep kosher, wedding etiquette, how to find a cute kippah, things that nobody wants to be asked about their level of observance, how to welcome converts, and how to deal with a theological crisis. (Actually, you could just read anything Tamar’s ever written and come out enlightened.)
Meanwhile, Laurel Snyder dug up some gorgeous ketubot, or wedding contracts. Rabbi Andy Bachman explained the link between the commandments to honor Shabbat and to honor your parents. And Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld weighed in on a crucial aspect of the “how can I be a better Jew?” question by pointing out that it’s not enough just to be a better person; a mitzvah is different from a good deed.
DIALOGS
Rabbi Seinfeld was really onto something: There’s a great deal of tension between the secular concept of doing good in the world and the Jewish notion of mitzvot. Two of our dialogs spring out of this tension. In the first, Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Daniel Bronstein debate the usefulness of Jewish Renewal. Is the movement, dedicated to a spirituality-heavy and humanitarian kind of Judaism, really just boomer narcissism? In the second, Jewish internet heavyweights Steven I. Weiss and Daniel (“Mobius”) Sieradski argue over the role of social justice. If you want to take an essay test once you’re done, we certainly won’t complain.
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apparently, there was an error in the "who got married" piece of my comment when i was referring to my former Day School classmates that i met up with at a reunion. the girl that was engaged at the time later got married, but it wasn't to an Israeli…it was to a Puerto Rican. oops. not sure if he is Jewish or not. but they looked very happy in their wedding photos.
What I remember most from Hebrew School was the ugly, racist caricature of a gun-toting Palestinian in the book on Israel we were using.
Buchanan also seems to relish Catholic vs. Jewish antagonism, one part of pre-Vatican II Catholicism that most Catholics don't miss. During the controversy over a proposed Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, Buchanan wrote some of his most frightening words:
"If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O'Connor of New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him, 'there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic…it's deep within them,' when he declares this 'is not a fight between Catholics and Jews,' he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume role of defender of the faith."
Tell your daughter to take names at camp, because her fellow campers (and perhaps your daughter herself) are the future Reform rabbis. A high percentage of us attended one of the Union camps at some point in our lives. And believe me, Hebrew school is almost never the driving influence for people to kick up their heels and run to rabbinic school.
Whatever you want to call it, Religious school, Hebrew School or Sunday school began in the early nineteen hundreds when Rebecca Gratz with all good intentions, modeled supplementary Jewish school after public school classrooms. The only problem is that these days we aren't interested in making kids memorize historical material and the typical public school classroom setting doesn't work.
Even less helpful is the finding that the number one reason Jewish parents send their kids to Religious school is because "they went, they hated it, and their kids will do the same thing", a scary prospect for any Jewish kid's future Sundays and anyone who, God bless them, teaches religious school.
No one will ditch the old, broken system for the much more effective retreat or camping system known in the business as "informal Jewish education" except for the rare, brave school. Meanwhile, we're dropping like flies.
what is judaism?
yiddish?
hebrew?
israel?
is judasim just another ‘ism’?
is it the people?
is it a belief?
is it a culture?
is it having the ‘W’ from jewcy on clothing or listening to babra straisand?
is it keeping the faith from generationg to generation through education?
is it shabbos?
the meat and milk thing?
gefilta fish and soft fresh challa?
however much we like to put down and mock the sidelock wearing, beard sporting, herring eating, matza munching, kosher buying, propaganda spreading, force feeding jews.
you gotta gice it up to them they are the ones keeping it real
judaism
Secular Judaism outside of Israel is not sustainable? Hmmm. It existed for decades in the U.S. without issue. And in Poland as well until the Holocaust.
Chabbad is not trying to convert? Well, denial ain't just a river in Egypt!
I wanted to comment extensively, but I am already bored. Jack's indignation is understandable but man – secular Judaism outside Israel is not sustainable. Judaism as a hobby just doesn't last. I'm down with the anonymous Moroccan Jew – I am Moroccan as well but not so anonymous. From my perspective, Yiddish is alive and kicking – there is still a very vibrant Yiddish theatre in Montreal (where I am from) and in Jerusalem (where I live) there are hordes of Yiddish speakers – granted they're all Haredim and have no interest in Workman's Circle communist inflected Passover Seders, but it doesn't seem to me as if they're worried about the continued existence of Yiddish… Moroccans and other non-European Jews don't give a shit about Yiddish and we're all kind of annoyed by this notion that Yiddish ought to hold a status in Judaism above any other Jew mongrel dialect. I mean shit, when old people ask me "Do you speak Jewish?" they mean Yiddish. As if!
Like Heather above my experience with Chabad was innocuous – I even prayed at the Chabad synagogue in Park Slope when I lived there. If there was ever any attempt to make me alter my impious behavior it was done by example rather than by overt or even covert persuasion – not much different from Jewcy's secret Jewish education efforts. I'm down with that of course – that's kind of what we do onJewlicious but there are legions of young Jews out there who are simply not interested in Jewish literacy at all – even if it is entertaining, well written and sprinkled with pop-culture references. Oh well. At least we're trying…
i went to Day School from PreK-8th grade, followed by a year at a co-ed yeshiva which was so horrible i pretend as if it never happened to this very day. the following year, i switched to public school and life was good again.
most of the students at my Day School were not overly religious. there were a lot of kids from Israel and Russia enrolled in my school as well. we learned about holidays but we also studied Jewish history (starting in the BC era), Hebrew and Yiddish language, and Torah. on Fridays, we would have a Shabbat celebration followed by songs and skits performed by us kids. and unlike a lot of Day Schools, girls were allowed to wear pants. last year, we held a reunion for the class of '95 (the year i graduated from Day School). ironically, it was held on a Friday night…at a bar in Manhattan. three are married (one to a non-Jewish guy), one is engaged (to an Israeli), one is on the verge of becoming engaged (to his non-Jewish girlfriend of nearly a decade), and others are on the prowl. so far, only one of my classmates has become a Ba'al Teshuva. he made aliyah a few years ago and lives in Israel with his wife and infant daughter.
as an adult, i visit MyJewishLearning.com on the web and Chabad in real life. but i have no intentions of becoming Orthodox. while there is that perpetual rumor that Chabadniks attempt to recruit non-observant Jews to become religious, i have never encountered anything like that. the same applies to the idea that Chabad attempts to convert non-Jewish partners. my boyfriend isn't Jewish and he's been to Chabad with me plenty of times, and not once has anyone told him to convert. but just because it hasn't come up now, doesn't mean it won't in the future. but like Jack said, people can't be pressured into becoming religious (or into converting).
Adam’s absolutely right. The emphasis on Yiddish as the Jewish ur-language and ur-culture by folks interested in their origin but horrified that anyone would link them to that horrible Israel — well, I guess I understand it. On the other hand, it’s pretty racist.
Noone in my family ever spoke Yiddish. It just wasn’t that big in Jewish Morocco, you know? Yet the oh-no-Israel-ists continue to figure that Yiddish is what should cement Jewish identity. And when I confront them about the fact that Yiddish only reflects one part of the Jewish experience, they hem and haw and end up arguing that there is no Jewish people, and that Jewish Moroccans just aren’t … Jewish like they are. Jewish is matza ball soup, and Jewish from Morocco is just exotica from another planet.
Well, no, sorry, we’re not from a separate people or nation. We’re all from the same diaspora. Celebrate your immediate ancestors, sure. But don’t do it by trying to erase our deeper and historic common roots, m’kay?
Hebrew schools are horrible because we’re using a 1950′s educational model to teach children who are growing up in 2007, and their parents (don’t forget them). If we want to make Hebrew school better, throw out the notion that it is “Hebrew” (which it isn’t), “religious” (which it also isn’t), or “Sunday” (a day on which no Jew should be in a classroom learning). And even worse, throw out “supplementary,” which would work if a Jewish education actually supplemented some kind of Jewish living. The model is broken, so let’s throw it out and start all over. Ideas??
So, has Chabbad unloaded a Mitzvah Tank in this comment thread via that "Is your life meaningless and pointless?" comment?
Is your life meaningless and pointless?
While I'm happy that some commentors have found in Jewish studies an awareness of social concerns and activism, I have always been baffled the claim that Jews are somehow more socially aware.
Having spent most of my life as a Jewish educator (started at 16 teaching in a free Sunday School for Jews who could not afford to join a synagogue)I am fascinated by the thoughtful critique that appears on this web site. Even though I am old enough to be a great-grandmother, I have an open mind where education is concerned. One miracle of my life is that sometimes Jewish education works. In my experience, when passionate teachers engage kids in Jewish learning it can make life more meaningful. For example, long before there was cultural awareness of the need for recycling and preserving our environment, a first grader walked out of a class and asked her father, “Daddy, do you litter?” Her father said, “No, I would never do that.” “Good,” she said, “Because I just learned that we are partners with God in protecting the world and I want to do my part.”
Thus began the career of a devoted social activist.
Joel Grishaver, a gifted Jewish writer and thinker, admonishes teachers to go right to the great existential questions. Judaism has much to offer about the why and how of life.
The best part for me, having had those passionate teachers in my own life, I continue to find value in my tradition.
Keep up the conversation. It is good for the Jewish people.
My daughter just recently was a Bat Mitzvah. Virtually all of her “jewishness” comes from her time at Camp. No, not Ramah, but a reform Jewish Camp. Rather than seeing how she came home from Hebrew School (Ugh!!), she was singing israeli-jewish songs, knew about jewish and israeli politics, and, has begun her left leaning political positions. Hebrew school is great for those who want to be Rabbis. It would be great to see it changed to be more like camp.
it shouldn't just be about Hebrew and Israel, being Jewish should be about Yiddishkeit too, equally both ideally. If it was just about Yiddishkeit, that would be just as narrow-focused as the dominance of Israeli culture and Hebrew.
I do agree that Yiddishkeit dominates the study of Jewish history, but I don't know if I see any way around that other than for historians to explore other aspects. The history is out there though.
 Just a thought.
Eh, let every other culture focus as much on themselves as possible. There's really no obligation on anyone's part to deeply understand any other culture. But that said all that is needed is an openess towards other experiences and respect other people's beliefs.
I definitely agree with you, and fear the inevitable point when Yiddish becomes an entirely dead language (the optimist in me thinks that won't happen, but after another generation who really knows). I suppose in this sense; Yiddish terms have become part of American lexicon, the image of Jews on television and such is always that of Eastern European, Yiddishkeit, and even the most well-known Jewish-American cultural institutions are in that mold (The Forward, Katz's, etc…) Part of this is just simply reflective of the fact that this is the largest group of Jews that has come to the United States from the 20th century onwards. And I think you are right about a case being made that what still exists is sort of a watered down Yiddishkeit. However, two things:
1. I don't think Zionism and Zionist education has been responsible for that watering down.
and 2. as I already pointed out, I think that the American Jewish community has done much–at the expense of many Jewish cultures–to solely focus on Yiddishkeit.
Maybe it all comes down to what each of us defines Yiddishkeit as, but honestly a lot of Yiddish/Jewsih culture does not exist in the U.S. and does not even exist in NYC anymore. One can say it's an evolution, but I honestly say the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. And while focusing on the state of Israel has united people, it has done so at the expense of others.
Regarding your claim about the "cult-like" status of Zionism, I would take serious issue with that. There is a wide spectrum of ideas and interpretations of Zionism, and in fact there always has been (many historians have written about how those splits were so problematic within the movement). There is, say, monolithic agreement that there should be a Jewish state of Israel, I mean that is the essential definition. But, to ignore the diversity of opinions and political views of that state is just simply innaccurate.
Jack, I appreciate and understand your perspective, but that still does not discount what I wrote (one could certainly argue with the ultimate implications, but not the factual aspect). My statement that Zionism united Jews around the world (is there any other issue that Moroccan, Russian, Yemeni, American and Ethiopian Jews view in fairly similar terms) around an ideal of national identity is absolutely true. Again, you can argue with the implications, that is fair enough. And we can certainly agree that there always needs to be open and constant analysis and criticism. I do think, however, that there is little to stand on in claiming the oppression of Yiddishkeit. Of course it is sad how the language and culture has been often shunned by highly acculturated children of immigrants and such. But that said, in the United States, Yiddish culture IS precisely seen as being Jewish culture. That was my whole point. So to only prop up Yiddishkeit, as Katie seems to suggest, I am saying is a really narrow conceptualization of what it could mean to be Jewish.
"In fact, I would argue that one of the successes of the Zionist movement is that it was able to–by and large–unify Jews of almost every stripe and culture around the idea of a national conciousness and shared narrative."
Doesn't that ignore the fact that Yiddishkeit is just one part of the Jewish experience? If anything, I would say that side of Jewish history has been given far too much prominence in comparison to the wide range of Jewish identities worldwide. In fact, I would argue that one of the successes of the Zionist movement is that it was able to–by and large–unify Jews of almost every stripe and culture around the idea of a national conciousness and shared narrative.
I think it's really a shame that all the emphasis is put on Hebrew, and no longer on Yiddish. Culturally, it provided so much in Jewish life. It's weird, I went from not feeling in with the in-crowd in Hebrew school with kids who probably didn't really care about what they were learning (it was only for socializing), to feeling like my uber-Israel obsessed college-aged peers are part of a club that I can't be in because I'm not religious, don't speak Hebrew or find any personal connection to Israel. For me, I relate more to the whole Eastern European Jewish thing. I think there's a lot to be said for non-religious Yiddish/Jewish culture.
surprised you liberal dandies give them such props. but i’m surprised that smart, not-so-affiliated folks like Spielberg and Steve Allen give them millions of dollars to buy up the Old City of Jerusalem for their yeshiva boys who like to tell the rest of us how unholy, meaningless, and pointless our lives are.
…is that's it's obsessed with holidays. Not that there's anything wrong with learning about Rosh Hashanah, Sukkos, Chanukah, Purim, Passover, and everything in between. But my Jewish education (and I did go to day school, at least for part of it) seemed to revolved almost entirely around the "chagim". In my "general studies" classes I learned different things depending on what grade I was in. In Hebrew school, I learned the same thing every year, depending on what month it was. Â
 Of course, there is a rich tradition behind every holiday, and I have no doubt that an 11-year-old can understand a lot more about Rosh Hashana than a 5-year-old.Â
 But there are also some great truths that span the whole year, and even a lifetime. Somehow we never really got around to those in our never-ending rush to learn songs and prepare decorations for the next chag. Is it any wonder, then, that people come out of hebrew school with a view that Judaism has no depth?
 –Z
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