Hebrew College Blog: "Why My Students Were Texting in Class…and Learning"

Hebrew College Blog: "Why My Students Were Texting in Class…and Learning"

Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed
Mon, Nov 09, 2009

http://jewish-education.hebrewcollege.edu/jewish-education/bid/28084/Why-My-Students-Were-Texting-in-Class-and-Learning

Picture this: You walk into a Prozdor classroom of ninth graders and see them all texting on their cell phones while the teacher is writing on the board. "So sad," you think, "another case of teaching gone bad." In fact, I was the teacher (filling in as a substitute), and I was encouraging the students to text during an introductory class about mitzvot. How did I come to design a class using text messaging as my active learning experience? And why do I think this was a successful and effective class?

In designing my lesson plan, my hope, as a constructivist educator, was to create an active learning experience that would engage the students by using tools that were familiar and comfortable for them. At first my plan was to play a game, something like "Mitzvah Jeopardy." But I needed something different, something new, which would push my boundaries as an educator. Answering a text on my phone in the midst of my planning, I found my inspiration: text messaging in class as a tool for collaborative learning.

"How many mitzvot are there? Let's text a sister, a friend, Dad, as many 'lifelines' as we want." My students eagerly clicked on their cells, and the numbers started coming in. "Do we have to fulfill all the mitzvot?" A quick yes/no text poll of everyone sparked an engaged conversation about the different understandings of commandment as obligation.

Comments from our lifelines punctuated our conversations: "My mom thinks that the mitzvot we fulfill are about making our lives feel more connected to other people." "My dad thinks we can't do mitzvot that have to do with the Temple." One friend remembered that there was "something about Israel" and how that changed which mitzvot we do. Our conversations became multidirectional--we were conversing around our text and around our texting, and we were conversing with one another and with our lifelines, who were conversing with us and with their texts (at least one parent was on Google and another on Wikipedia). 

The students loved this lesson. They loved using their phones, but more than that, they loved the learning. Our classroom discussion was rich, full of personal connections and probing questions. While I have no empirical evidence that it was the medium that provided this depth, as a teacher, I had the clear sense that the conversation was informed by the medium. The explicit and implicit integrated curriculum brought it all together. An added benefit was that parents loved this lesson. It provided a rare window into their kids' experience at Prozdor without having that awkward car conversation: How was class? Fine. What did you learn? Whatever. 

It is time for Jewish education to engage 21^st century technology, to connect with our students using the media that are such an integral part of their daily lives. This is an educational imperative for formal as well as complementary Jewish education, and it is a valuable pedagogy for experiential education, as well. Texting is only the beginning. Distance learning courses, wiki building for Jewish teen education, YouTube instructional videos, Twitter for Jewish education, fantasy world gaming meets the Bible--all this and more are the next steps in today's Jewish educational teen curriculum.

As for me, I can't wait to hear from you--how are you using technology in your Jewish educational venue?  I want to know before I have to substitute for my next absent teacher.   

Rabbi Karen G. Reiss Medwed, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew College, where she is Dean of Faculty of Prozdor, Director of the EdD in Jewish Education Leadership and Coordinator for the Pardes Educators Program. This spring she will be teaching a distance learning course at Hebrew College, Theories and Foundations in Jewish Education, where she will explore theories such as constructivist education, and practices such as collaborative education and technology in Jewish educational venues. 

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

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Why did the Chicken cross the road?

[an egg-ception to "Thou shalt not forward..."]

Why DID the chicken cross the road?

 

Abraham: And G-d appeared to me and said, Avraham, Avraham, take the chicken, thy only chicken, that thou lovest, and take it across the road...

Shulamit Aloni: I'll eat as many chickens as I like on Yom Kippur, it's nothing to do with the haredim what I do in my home...

Baal Shem Tov: There was once a chicken in Medzibozh...

Ben & Jerry: New Launch: Grandma's Funky ChickenSoup Ice Cream, or Funky Chicken for short. 20c per tub to the Environmental Chicken Fund

David Bar-Ilan: This question represents the worst sort of gross anti-Semitism on the part of the world's media. Reuters is particularly culpable...

Edgar Bronfman: I shall be taking this matter up, on behalf of the WJC, with President Clinton, the Pope, and whoever's head of Russia this week...

Charles Bronfman: Forget the chicken! Let's get these teenagers to Israel: just think what will happen if they see an ISRAELI chicken crossing the road...

Buber: I and Thou, Chicken

Shlomo Carlebach: Yannani nini nini; yannani nini nini; yannani nini, yannani nini, yi nini nini;yini yannani yannani, yi ninininini, yanani yanani yi ni ni ni ni ni, yanani, yanani yininininini.....

Bill Clinton: Chaverim, I'd like to share with you a d'var Torah on this important sh'eylah...

Hillary Clinton: I know we had Jewish friends at Yale but this is getting ridiculous!

Clinton's speechwriter: Yo! That's another 50 bucks the guys at the poker game owe me!

Complete Artscroll Siddur: Bend once when the chicken goes onto the road (bending first at the knees, bending fully as it takes its second step); bend again as it reaches the middle of the road (only a half bow); bend a third time as it nears the other side. If it gets across without being run over, say also a shehecheyanu (p358); unless the congregation is saying brochos before and after the shema, in which case no interruption, even for a brocha, is permitted. No brocha is said on yontef, rosh chodesh, or during the entire month of nissan. On erev Yom Kippur the chicken may be used for kapporos.

G-d: Thou Shalt Cross The Road !!

Ibn Ezra: It was not a specific chicken, it was any chicken (cf. Rashi)

Fackenheim: We must all help the chicken across the road, whether the chicken wants to or not; to fail to do so would be to grant motorized vehicles a posthumous victory. The responsibility to help the chicken across the road is holy; it is not negotiable; it is the 615th Commandment...

Viktor Frankl: It was searching for meaning.

Arthur Green: A contemporary Jewish theology must incorporate the chicken's need to cross the road, even if we don't fully understand why it wanted to cross the road in the first place.

Blu Greenberg: In the first ten years or so of our marriage, Yitz and I didn't really focus on this question, we lived quite conventional Jewish lives, and had chicken soup every Friday night. I remember quite clearly the moment at which I first began seriously to think about this important question in a radically new light....Nevertheless I want to emphasize that in my view a synthesis of orthodoxy, feminism and the rights of the chicken is absolutely possible, difficult though this may sometimes seem in practice

Yitz Greenberg: There have been three quite distinct historical Jewish responses to this question...

Bonna Haberman: What's most important is that chickens be able to daven freely at the kotel...

David Hartman: As I was saying to Shimon, Yitzhak, Ezer Weizman, Edgar Bronfman and the Pope, all of whom wanted to know my views on this subject...That reminds me, Motti, I want two chickens! And three bottles of wine!!

Herzl: One day, chicken, you WILL reach the other side. You may not believe it; others may not believe it; but fifty years from now...

Heschel: If that chicken makes it to the other side I'll be radically amazed!

Hillel: If I am not for the chicken, then who will be? But if I am only forthe chicken, then what am I? And if it doesn't cross now, when?

Meir Kahane: The only good chicken is a dead chicken.

Levi Lauer: Levinas is the key contemporary thinker on this problem.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Stupid question. We simply follow the halakhah. The chicken crosses the road. That's it.

Michael Lerner: When I was the leading chicken's rights activist in the 60's, I actively studied the question. In the politics of meaning, no chickens will have to cross the road if they don't want to...

Levinas: [Answer completely unintelligible]

Yediot Aharonot: Chicken Run Over By Mack Truck!!! Graphic photos, pages 1,2,3,4 and 5; The Sex Life Of The Chicken, pages 6 and 7; You Too Can Have Sex With A Chicken, page 8; other news, pages 9 & 10.

Moses: And the Lord said: "Thou shalt cross the road"

Orthodox rabbi: A very interesting sh'eyla. There are many different halachic opinions on this vital question for our time. In my tshuva I shall review the opinions of the tannaim, amoraim, Rashi, Ralbag, Ramban, Rambam,the ger, the gor, the grib, the grilbag, the grandpa, grodzinskis, my grocer, Jerry Garcia, and heilige harav hagaon hashlita rebbe Mendel Shneerson, zt'l.

Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi: There can be no answer to this or any other question until this government increases allocations to the yeshivot immediately, fires Shimon Shetreet, and ends all archeological digs...

Israeli Sephardi Chief Rabbi: There can be no answer to this question until I consult with Arye Deri. He's awaiting a jail sentence for fraud? Err, let me get back to you...

Rodger Kamenatz: It was amazing to see how this question united the age old cultures of Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism. As Yitz Greenberg said to Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, while the Dalai Lama looked on and several hundred Buddhist monks waved traditional prayer flags in the hazy Indian wind..

Mordechai Kaplan: Give the chicken a voice,not a veto.

Yosef Leibowitz: Why did it cross the road? Creation, revelation, redemption...

Pinchas Peli: I was privileged to hear the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik, speak on this subject. His discourses, which lasted several hours, were an experience which represented an exquisite and unparalleled combination of erudition, western philosophy, Torah learning and knowledge of poultry...

Shimon Peres: Yitzhak Rabin, zichrono livracha, would have wanted the chicken to cross the road; it is our duty to unite together to see that it comes to pass..

Pirkei Avot: Moses heard the answer at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua...

Judith Plaskow: Where was the chicken in Jewish history? What was its name? Let us begin now to reclaim its significance, to refashion new rituals, to allow its voice to speak through the ages ...

Letty Cottin Pogrebin: In the early days on Ms magazine I cared more about women than chickens; but I see now that this was a sort of false consciousness, an anti-chickenism within the movement...

Ramban: Really the chicken didn't have to cross the road: this was G-d's allowance for the weakness of human nature. In the time of the mashiach chickens will no longer have to cross the road.

Rashi: THE chicken: [i.e., without the definite article this might be any chicken, but THE suggests a particular chicken]; there is a midrash that this is the first chicken created in gan eden. A second opinion: poulez [old french]

Reform rabbi: Because it wanted to; in the modern era we all have autonomy, including chickens. And if any "orthodox" institution attempts to stop chickens crossing the road we will protest at this outrageous infringement of religious, civil and poultry freedoms...

Rosenzweig: The chicken hasn't actually crossed yet, but I hope it may one day do so.

Jonathan Sacks: It is impossible to answer this quesion, (or, for that matter, any other), without referring to Alasdair MacIntyre's magisterial "After Virtue" (London: Duckworth, 1981). His argument is taken further in his "Whose Justice ? Which Rationality ?" (London:Duckworth, 1988) and "Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry" (London: Duckworth, 1990). Also of interest are his earlier works, "A Short History of Ethics" (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), "Against the Self-Images of the Age" (London: Duckworth, 1971) and especially "Secularization and Moral Change" (London: OUP, 1967). MacIntyre's ideas are developed in a theological context in Stanley Hauerwas, "The Peaceable Kingdom" (London:SCM,1983). The Talmud Bavli and the London Beth Din also hold views on this question.

Sforno: It is desirable that the chicken should cross the road, even in the time of the coming of the mashiach (cf. Ramban)

Shammai: Typical Hillel! Comes out with complete nonsense, and everybody ends up quoting him! Life is so unfair! And as for the chicken! - if I get my hands on that chicken it'll be straight to my talmidim for Intro Schechting 101...

Danny Siegal: The chicken was doing a mitzvah, and so should we!

Gary Shapiro: Leo Strauss is the key thinker on this question.

R. Soloveitchik: There were actually two chickens: Chicken One, and Chicken Two...

Steven Spielberg: I'm covering this in my new movie, Raiders of the Lost Chicken-Coop, from which all profits will go to my new Chicken Foundation (which my mother, who has experience in these things, is going to head).

Adin Steinsaltz: See my book, The Many Petalled Chicken.

Leo Strauss: [Just about comprehensible, but somewhat boring]

Arthur Waskow: At Chavurat Shalom we experimented with a chicken-free Judaism; the beginnings of modern eco-kashrut...

Ezer Weizman: Grunt [expletive deleted]

Leslie Wexner: I'm happy to announce a new $40 million endowment to help answer this crucial question.

The Zohar: Rabbi Pinhas was on his way to visit his daughter, the wife of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai. On the way, he encountered a chicken crossing the road, and he heard the sound of a cow. He said: There are no cows in sight. The chicken answered him: I am a cow, I am crossing the road to Yerushalayim, so that I can be offered up as an olah. Rabi Pinhas responded: Would that I could offer you as an olah, for your fragrance would rise directly to the ein sof. But, alas, cows don't have feathers.

Kitvei ha-Ariza"l: If Rabi Pinhas had only offered the chicken up as an olah, Mashiach would have come.

Kafka: I woke up one morning to discover that I had been turned into a chicken. I immediately felt a compulsion to cross the road. I can not say why.

Uzi Meshullam: The chicken was abducted from it's true Yemenite owners, and it was crossing the road in an attempt to find it's way home. And I'll kill anyone (.has ve-shalom) who says otherwise.

Rav. M. Tendler: Of course I could answer this most simple and obvious question, but this attempt to state the most fundamental belief of Judaism through the impersonal medium of email is fraught with danger. Can I possibly prevent your erroneous and illogical deductions in this attempt to teach the Torah "while standing on one foot." In all likelihood, you couldn't understand, although I can tell you one thing. Chicken, kosher; swordfish, treif.

Judah ha-Levi: My road is the East, but my chicken is in the farthest West.

Woody Allen: I mean, it was, it was... a chicken... of legal consenting age. It wasn't like it was my REAL daughter or anything. The heart wants what it wants. (And don't believe anything that Mia says about me.)

Aviv Geffen: I would say it again, but I got into too much trouble the last time I said it.

Discovery Program: If you look at the portion of Tamar and Yehudah, where Tamar is waiting on the ROAD, and you take every 13th letter of each alternating line, you AMAZINGLY get the words to "Uf Gozal", proving, once and for all, that Arik Einstein has ruah ha-kodesh. (Someone should tell Uri Zohar).

Elisha ben Abuye: There is no chicken, there is no road.

Neitzsche: See: Elisha ben Abuye

Hasdai Crescas: Some would say that the chicken was exercising it's free will. But of course I have already proven that free will doesn't exist, so it must have had some other purpose in mind. If it was trying to exercise it's free will, it was guilty of a philosophical error typical of lower vertebrates.

Israeli Border Guard: And what is your purpose for crossing over to the other side?
Chicken: Bok
Guard: Is that your only reason?
Chicken: Bok, fock, bok!
Guard: No need for fowl language!

Jacob Neusner: The answer to that question will be in footnote 22b to my next book, "Epistemology of Bava Metzia" (University of South Florida, 1996) which I am about to start writing. Uh, it was published already? George!!!!!

Bibi Netanyahu: Most Israelis on the left mistakenly think that they want the chicken to cross the road. But not to let them get to the other side. And that's not really crossing the road. That's why I say it's better to keep them in the coop.

Sarah Netanyahu: You, Chicken, are the WORST %#*@ing housekeeper, EVER!!!! YOU'RE FIRED!!!!

Rav Ovadiah Yosef: If it was shechted by an Ashkenazi, it's treif.

Rav Landau (Bene Berak): If I didn't shecht it, it's treif.

Hebrew National Co.: So what if we routinely fire our mashgichim, it's kosher.

Nearly everyone else: It's treif.

Chief Mashgiach of the Rabbanut of Israel: I thought all chickens in Israel were kosher, aren't they?

---

NOTE: "As It Is Written: Project 304,805" continues through fall 2010 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission Street, San Francisco; (415) 655-7800, thecjm.org.

NYTimes: "A Torah Scribe Pushes the Parchment Ceiling"

By BRUCE WEBER
November 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/arts/design/08sfculture.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

In Hebrew the word for Julie Seltzer's arcane profession is soferet; she's a scribe, a Hebrew calligrapher who writes sacred texts on parchment. A mere handful of women do what she does, and an even more select handful are practiced in the especially ritualistic craft of writing particularly holy scrolls, including the Torah, considered the foundation of Jewish life and thought.

Age-old Jewish law declares that only men be trained for such work, and that a Torah that has been created by a woman is unsuitable for use in worship, strictures that are still upheld in Orthodox communities and congregations. But Ms. Seltzer, who is 34, and a few others are widening an ancient tradition in a modern age. She estimated that perhaps 10 women in the world write the Torah and the other restricted documents containing quotations from Hebrew Scriptures, including those for the tefillin, small leather boxes housing Scriptural passages, and mezuzot, which are affixed to doorframes.

All of this makes Ms. Seltzer's performance — an admittedly odd word for what she's up to, and one she doesn't like — at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco unique and compelling. As the central element of a new exhibition, "As It Is Written: Project 304,805," a simply and elegantly organized introduction to the fundamental role of the Torah in Jewish life, she is creating a new holy scroll.

Working in a gallery in full public view, amid displays that explore the Torah as both historical artifact and contemporary object of inspiration, Ms. Seltzer is painstakingly reproducing the ancient text — which consists of the Five Books of Moses, who is said to have received them whole as a divine message from God — on sheets of parchment made, as prescribed by law, from the skin of a kosher animal (in this case a cow). Her writing tools are black ink and quills she carves from turkey feathers.

Letter by letter (the exhibition is named for the precise number of Hebrew characters in the Torah), line by line (there are 42 lines in a column of text), column by column (four columns constitute a sheet of parchment) and sheet by sheet (62 sheets will be needed to complete the scroll), she is adhering to the complex laws, outlined in the Talmud, that were developed by early scribes and well established by the sixth century.

Among them: Every word should be spoken aloud before it is written, and no word may be written from memory. (Ms. Seltzer is working from a copy of the text known as a Tikkun.) When her scroll is complete, no letter may be touching another, a stricture that often requires corrections with a blade and chalk to restore the parchment color. Ill-formed letters must be corrected as well, with the offending ink scraped away and then re-inked; no letter may be made correct by an act of erasure. The different names for God must be treated with special care.

Ms. Seltzer began her work in early October. Writing six or seven hours a day for five days a week, she estimates that the project will take 14 months to complete. According to Connie Wolf, the museum's director and the curator of the exhibition, this will be the first time a Torah has ever been written from beginning to end in public, though synagogues that commission Torahs often have scribes demonstrate their work for the congregation.

"We wanted a woman for this project," Ms. Wolf said. "We're a contemporary institution, and women are making progress in this arena; we wanted to provide the opportunity."

Ms. Seltzer, a small, dark-haired woman with pale blue eyes and an easy smile, radiates calm not only in conversation but also within the fierce concentration her work requires. She began her training only two years ago — "I'm a newbie," she said — and continues to study. Her primary teacher is Jen Taylor Friedman, a New Yorker born in Britain who is just 30 but among the very few women to have completed an entire Torah. According to Ms. Wolf, she may indeed be the only one who has ever done so.

"I've never seen a source that says otherwise," Ms. Friedman said in a telephone interview. "But 'ever' is a big word, and Judaism has been around for a long time."

Ms. Seltzer said she had much to learn and that her work would only get better and more confident over time, but to an inexpert eye, at least, her calligraphy is lovely. The script style, developed in the 16th century, features staunch strokes and delicate flourishes; seven Hebrew letters are embellished with three-pronged antennaelike crowns.

The work is indisputably artful, but it's not intended to be expressive. The idea is to copy exactly; writing a Torah is less an act of creativity than of sublimation.

"I know the museum sees it that way, but if I thought this was a performance, I wouldn't be able to do it," Ms. Seltzer said.

And indeed, in that very denial lies the art in her performance. Watching her impossibly steady hand, the deft maneuvering of the quill (each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet requires its own separate technique) and the inexorable progress of the text across a column and down a page yields a palpable sense of ancient ritual that slows your breathing, and you can't help seeing that she is communing deeply with the text as she copies it. The writing is an act of faith.

"I was into the 'begets,' " she said during a break on a recent morning, recalling a moment of elation. She was referring to two segments of Genesis next to the story of Babel that trace the Biblical generations from Noah to Avram, later renamed Abraham by God.

"They go on for a while, so I smiled when I saw Avram," she said. "I was excited."

She pointed at the place in her written text.

"There he is!" she said, beaming.

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

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Toldot 5770: "Unbound"

Toldot 5770: "Unbound"

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

[*New Feature*: This Dvar Torah is available as a podcast!  Click here for the link & to subscribe: http://tinyurl.com/rcpodcast]

 

It's always bothered me that the Torah doesn't tell us more about Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Eisav and the incredible sequence of events in Genesis, chapter 27. Why does Jacob listen to his mother and lie to his father? If he was cunning enough to get the birthright from Eisav, why couldn't he exert his will here, to his mother? If there was meat close enough for Jacob and Rebecca to get, why did Eisav need to go hunting? If Isaac clearly knew Jacob was pretending, then why didn't he end the charade? Which son's blessing is truly better?

 

The Torah is a script. It is our family diary. I love it. What I love about it most is not the artful blend of law and narrative, not the perplexing moral questions. What I love most is the space, for in between the verses of Torah, I find myself. This is my own reading of Genesis 27:1-18, a personal Midrash surrounding the original Biblical text. The bold text in the written form is the biblical original, and the plain font is my work. I present it not as Truth (with a capital "T"), but as a personal and fallible exercise of love.

 

**************

 

He lay there in bed. His eyes had grown dim, but in the pale morning light creeping into the room he clearly saw his time swiftly arriving. It had been a long time since he had exerted himself to rise from his bed, and he had developed a way of signaling the member of his household whose presence was needed. This time, he signaled for his elder son.

 

Son entered the room, and removed his shoes noiselessly so as not to wake his mother who was lying on the farther side of the bed. Father wanted to speak with his eldest alone, which was getting increasingly difficult as his body continued to resist his will and his wife became his voice more and more. As father began to speak, son failed to notice his mother's eye blink repeatedly, as if to banish the blurry image from his father's side.

 

Speaking was exhausting for Isaac, but he would not be denied. He longed for his pain to end, and felt peace imminent. But before that happened, he needed to heal his child. Isaac's pain had transferred to his children. His wounds, instead of healing, had left his children empty and angry, and he needed to show them his love. He needed to end their pain before it was too late, as it was too late for him. His life would end before his father's love could heal him. He would not let his children wait that long.

 

Isaac tearfully said, "My son." And while his son thought: "Abbah, seeing you so weak hurts me, and I wish I could ease your pain- I wish I could do something," all that came out was, "Here I am."

 

Sensing his son's feelings Isaac desperately wanted to give him what he could. Eisav had foolishly sold his claim to the prized birthright, and since that point had become increasingly empty. His son wanted to do something? Fine. He could send him on a mission to accomplish something.

 

But he needed to make sure that his son knew what was about to happen. Wiping away his tears he told his son, "You're a grown man now. You know I'm old, and I don't know how soon I might die. Get your things, and go hunt some meat. Then cook it how I like it, and bring it to me to eat, so that I can give you my deepest blessing before I die."

 

After solemnly accepting his mission, Eisav left before he betrayed his usually unflappable demeanor by crying in front of his father. But unbeknownst to either of the men, Rebecca had been eavesdropping as Isaac spoke to his son Eisav. She had never approved of her elder son's habits, knew that her two sons could never coexist, and certainly didn't want Eisav to inherit the family name. So when Eisav left to hunt game to bring home, she slipped out from her tent and found Jacob, as usual, in the cooking area of the family tent.

 

Rebecca said to her son Jacob, "It has been so hard for me to watch your father lose his senses during these past months. I know he's been sharing less attention with you recently, but he's been very different to all of us. He sees in Eisav his old strength and is about to give your brother the family blessing, as soon as Eisav gets back with some food. But that's not the plan I have had in mind. Eisav is your older brother, but as long ago as when we learned about the soup and birthright trade, we knew he wasn't the one for the mantle of this family. And when he went and married those Hittite tramps - that just killed your father and me. He just isn't sensitive enough. The family blessing is rightfully yours.

 

"So listen carefully to my instructions. Go fetch me two kids your father bought, and I'll whip up a dish for your father, just how he likes it. His taste buds haven't been so great- he'll never know the difference. Then you'll take it to your father to eat, so that he'll bless you before he dies."

 

Jacob didn't like the idea at all. Yes, it was all too true that he hadn't received much love from his father recently, but to lie? Not only that, but to brazenly take his brother's blessing? Jacob had bought it with the bowl of lentils fair and square, so why couldn't he just be honest with his father? Was Isaac really that far gone that he wouldn't believe his own son?

 

But Jacob didn't know how to respond to his frenzied mother who was meanwhile gripping his arm with a fierce urgency. He blurted out, "But Eisav is such a hairy man! I'm smooth-skinned. If Abbah touches me, he'll think I'm a trickster, forget about the blessing, and give me a curse!"

 

But his mother responded, "Curse?! Let your curse, my son, be my worry! Just do as I say and go fetch them for me."

 

Jacob was trapped. He could either do the honorable thing, thereby disobeying his mother and losing his father's blessing, or he could listen to his mother's desperate plea, impersonate his brother and thereby steal the blessing which was rightfully his to begin with. Eisav was at the hunt, risking his life, and Jacob was home, risking his soul. He began to lose himself as he thought, "Where is my God now? I'm losing my future, my life. Here, my mother is going to sacrifice my future the way my father's was sacrificed by his father, and I'm been forced to betray him to save myself!

 

As if in a trance, Jacob rambled on as he got the food and brought it to his mother to cook. Rebecca had always stood over his shoulder in the kitchen. Eisav had always assured him that he was a good cook, but she was always so controlling. As his mother prepared his father's favorite dish, she gave Jacob Eisav's spare dress clothes, which were strewn about in the house, and made Jacob put them on. With a wild look in her eyes, she covered his hands and the hairless part of his neck with the skins of the kids, still warm and moist from the life that had filled them.

 

Then, as she put the food into the limp hands of her son, Jacob stepped into his father's room and accepted his fate.

 

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

To join Rabbi Creditor's email list, send a blank email to thetisch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

OpEd in the Jewish Week: "Needed: An End to Ho-Hum Conservative Services"

by Brett Cohen
Special to the Jewish Week

We need a deeply engaged, committed, non-fundamentalist Jewish center. The tragedy of Conservative Jewish decline is not that we've stopped needing Conservative Judaism, but that Conservative Judaism has failed to live up to its mission.

I challenge a spiritually serious Jew to go to pray at your friendly neighborhood Conservative shul and not to come away with the impression that something has gone very wrong. Empty McMansion  sanctuaries, graying membership, declining ranks, stultifying services. . .

Why don't younger, committed folks want to show up on Saturday morning? Because the services are rote, hum-drum. You go to a religious service to hope for spiritual connection, however uncertain and fleeting. You have more chance of finding that meditatingor hiking than coming to a shul where

they don't really pray. But the rare egalitarian service where the intensity bolts around the room, that service can speak to a whole swath of us who want to touch something holy in our lives. A Conservative service that works is a spiritual on-ramp for those many of us who walked out of the twice a year suburban Judaism, vowing not to return. But without meaningful services (and here I am focused primarily on Shabbat services), all you have is a community center with a Torah in it. If you want Conservative Judaism to work, you need Conservative services  to work.
       
To that end, here's some of what I think you need to have a good synagogue service:

- Heavy participation in the singing. Find me a service with a cantor wailing away operatically and I'll show you a bad service. If you're being prayed to or sung to at a service, you are not praying or singing. To all the cantors who are at shuls - keep it simple and beautiful. Song is a central route to devotion; you should try to impress the shul with the congregation's singing, not yours.

- Lay leadership of the davening. It's hard for anyone to keep the energy level up if he is running all levels of the service week after week. Let the congregants run parts of the service. Rabbis - this is a statement of strength, not weakness. The best way to have a vibrant congregation is to have a congregation made up of a strong core who can lead the praying.

- A focus on the eternal, not the topical. Synagogue is not a talk show, and it should not be a political town meeting. We're reading and praying from texts that are thousands of years old. If we are going to grapple with topics at shul, why can't we grapple with topics from the text, instead of the latest editorial from the New York Times? If your talk is ripped from today's headlines, you are short-changing the tradition. Worse than that, you're signaling that the text is not as interesting or visceral as the latest heated political debate. Be timeless, not timely.
 
- Young people. Get the idealistic college kids. Get the singles looking to hook up. Make it easy for the young families with their babies "destroying" services. Think of it like this: I tell you there's your usual Friday night Shabbat service at your shul. Now I tell you that 40 Jewish kids from the nearby college are staying at your synagogue and they'll run Kabalat Shabbat. Which service will have more earnestness, more vitality, more light? No young folks at services means your shul is dying.    
 
-A service run amongst the congregation, not at a distance. The large majority of shuls have a large raised bimah from which the clergy  talk down to the congregation. Tear it down and replace it with something small and in the center of the congregation. If you can't tear it down, walk right into the middle of the seats and run the service from a small bimah there, from the same level as the congregants. Think of nearly any time you've prayed in a group meaningfully and felt moved (at the Kotel, at a chavurah in college, at a small service in one of the side rooms in the synagogue where everyone sits in a circle on chairs). The worship is happening all around you.

You will not have been craning up at clergy on a huge stage while you sat below. The physical structure of most synagogues reinforces the vicious cycle of clergy praying for congregants, congregants zoning out, and then clergy needing to pray for congregants because congregants no longer know what to do. Get down from there. Sit amongst the congregation while you are praying. There is nothing more ridiculous than those high seats at the back of the massive bimahs for the clergy and officers to sit on as though you were Supreme Court Justices.

Ever wonder why your congregants don't feel connected? Reduce the distance between you and the congregants, and between the text and the congregants. Put the heart of the service right where they are.
 
-Fidelity to the language in your Siddur. While melodic innovation (so long as it's singable by the lay person) can be great, messing with the text so that your synagogue has a unique way of praying is not so great. If your synagogue lightly changes and rearranges the text from the prayer book, congregants from other places may not feel comfortable at your shul, and congregants from your synagogue may not have the ability to comfortably pray elsewhere. Stick with the siddur as much as possible.
 
-More silence. Most conservative and reform synagogues either gloss over the silent Amidah (making the vast majority of it communal rather than personal) or skip it altogether. Nearly all synagogues rush it. Even if you don't believe in having a traditional silent Amidah (and I believe very strongly in it, for me it is the lynchpin of the service), then at least have quiet time for people to silently pray or meditate. Why should people come to pray at synagogue? It's not primarily to hear others talk, or to eat kiddush, or to socialize, or even to learn.

It is to talk to God. Most shuls are afraid of quiet, silent prayer. "People will get bored. They won't know what to do." Let go. Create quiet time for the quiet voice of the soul to be heard.

Brett Cohen runs JGB Management, an investment firm

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

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Save the Date! Dec 5: A Havdallah Pre-Channukah Night of Music and Stories w/Rabbi Shawn Zevit and Rabbi Menachem Creditor

SONGS OF RENEWAL & INSPIRATION

A HAVDALLAH PRE-CHANUKKAH NIGHT OF MUSIC AND STORIES

Featuring Rabbi Shawn Zevit

and Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Havdallah followed by concert

Saturday, December 5, 2009

8:30PM sharp, Tickets/Donations at the Door $5

Congregation Netivot Shalom

1316 University Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94702

Call  (510) 549-9447 for details

 

A portion of ticket sales will go to Tzedakah,

and a percentage of CD sales will go to MyNewRedShoes.org.

cdbaby.com/Artist/ShawnZevit                    menachemcreditor.org

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

To join Rabbi Creditor's email list, send a blank email to thetisch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Results of a fascinating HUC-JIR survey: "Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity"

Visit www.huc.edu Contact HUC-JIR More News & Events

HUC-JIR Faculty Release Results of Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity

How do American Jews speak English? Who uses Hebrew and Yiddish words and New York regional features? When using Hebrew words, who prefers Israeli pronunciations and who prefers Ashkenazic ones? Which Yiddish-origin features do some non-Jews use? Two researchers from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion have begun to answer these questions. Linguist Sarah Bunin Benor and Sociologist Steven M. Cohen have released the results of a large-scale survey of Jews and non-Jews in the United States.

The online survey began in the summer of 2008 with an e-mail invitation to about 600 people, and within 6 weeks, over 40,000 people had participated. Several newspapers and dozens of blogs reported on the survey. "We were amazed at how much interest there was and how quickly the survey spread around the world," says Dr. Benor, who has published several papers on the Yiddish-influenced English speech of Orthodox Jews.

Benor and Cohen found that American Jews use many Yiddish words and constructions within their English speech (such as heimish, bashert, "staying by them," and "she has what to say") and that many non-Jews use selected Yiddishisms (especially klutz, shpiel, and "money shmoney"). Most Yiddish words are more common in the older generations, but some (including bentsh, leyn, and shul) are increasing among younger Jews who attend synagogue frequently. American Jews, especially those who have spent time in Israel or are highly engaged in religious life, also pepper their English with Hebrew and Aramaic words (including yofi, balagan, davka, and kal vachomer). Jews with different social networks have different understandings of the meanings of certain words (such as whether shmooze means 'chat' or 'kiss up'). Outside of New York, Jews are more likely than non-Jews to use certain New York regional pronunciations, such as pronouncing "orange" as "AH-range." And Jews are somewhat more likely than non-Jews to report that they have been told that they interrupt too much.

While Benor and Cohen are working on a number of academic papers based on the survey, they have written a summary of survey results geared toward a non-specialist audience. They have also prepared answers to Frequently Asked Questions, including a glossary of the words included in the survey. If you have not yet taken the survey, you can do so here. Finally, Benor and Cohen will be offering a free webinar (online seminar) to present more analysis and answer questions about the survey. This webinar is sponsored by the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion's School of Jewish Communal Service and will take place on Wednesday, November 18, 10am Los Angeles time (1pm on the east coast of the U.S.). If you would like to participate in the webinar, you can register here. Also, in conjunction with the survey and a class on American Jewish Language and Identity, Prof. Benor has started an online collaborative lexicon of distinctive elements of Jewish American English). You are invited to contribute words to it. Finally, if you would like to be invited to participate in future studies of American Jewish identity and community connected with the Berman Jewish Policy Archive, please send an email to bjpasurveys@gmail.com (your message can be blank).

Easy list of links:
Summary of Survey Results
Frequently Asked Questions
Take the survey (if you have not already participated)
Online collaborative lexicon of distinctive elements of Jewish American English
Register for the November 18 Webinar
Sign up to participate in Jewish community surveys
---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
-- www.netivotshalom.org
-- www.shefanetwork.org
-- menachemcreditor.org

To join Rabbi Creditor's email list, send a blank email to thetisch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.