Jewish Supplementary Education: A New Paradigm?

Chatting with colleagues the other day, the topic of extra-curricular activities came up. One colleague recounted many drives to rural Quebec where his son plays competitive water polo. Another mentioned early-morning trips to the hockey rink.

They turned to me, “And your kids?”

Thinking through my three-times-a-week commuting schedule to Hebrew school and many weekends busy with synagogue activities, I retorted: “My kids? They are competitive Jews.”

At least that’s how I feel these days.

With less time for spontaneous exercise than we had in my day (I recall hours of carefree cycling as an eight-year-old), coupled with fewer families opting for both Jewish day school and synagogue Judaism, we need a new paradigm.

One paradigm I know won’t work is the endless preaching I hear about soccer being the enemy of Jewish continuity. Somehow, the poor sport of soccer has become the vessel for carrying the frustrations of contemporary leaders surrounding the lack of Jewish engagement in their communities. These leaders might be gently chiding parents for choosing “soccer over shul,” but I hear them hissing “Soccer! Soccer! Soccer!” in a Victorian-era-laced religious rant.

This year, my seven-year-old daughter attends her supplementary Hebrew school three days per week for a total of six classroom hours. Compared to the nine weekly hours of Judaic studies taught at the Ottawa Jewish Community School at the elementary level, I consider my daughter’s two-thirds content at one-sixth the price – with the benefit of public school French immersion, neighbourhood friends and the gift of being part of a multicultural school experience – to be a bargain.

But I am also committed to taking my kids to shul one or two Shabbat mornings per month, which means that weekend mornings are out for scheduled activities. So, for now, say goodbye to skiing (where you need a weekend block that would cut into either shul or Hebrew school).

But this year, I also want my daughter to learn piano and tennis, and she wants to add musical theatre, dance and hockey (finishing on Friday afternoon just in time for her to be home for Shabbat dinner). Add two parents with full-time jobs, one who has trouble saying no to committee work and who spends months learning High Holiday davening and Torah chanting at her shul, and the other who has 94 Shakespeare speeches to learn for his part in a community theatre production of King Lear, and you have one busy family. And just wait for her younger brother’s activities to join the roster.

It’s no wonder more than two-thirds of Jewish children in Ottawa aren’t receiving any form of Jewish day or supplementary school education.

There’s got to be a better way.

One American Jewish educator has proposed what she calls “badges.” Rabbi Joy Levitt, executive director of the Manhattan JCC, writes, “We are faced with an unacceptable gap between the Jewish lives we want for ourselves and for our families, and the Jewish lives we actually experience.” (“The New Hebrew School,” The Jewish Week, January 11, 2011)

Rabbi Levitt’s vision entails Jewish students across the city working toward a badge system whereby they would commit to mastering several themes, partly of their choosing: Hebrew language, community service, Jewish arts, prayer, tikkun olam, and even attending camp. Once a week they would gather after school with their Jewish peers in a clubhouse atmosphere to socialize. Rabbi Levitt envisions that the program could be run through a JCC or through synagogues.

Her mention of synagogues and summer camp brings me to my last point. Many families I know are so tapped out by formal Jewish education they have little appetite to include shul or Jewish residential summer camp as a regular part of their family’s experience. I could devote a column to the historical and contemporary experiential importance of synagogues in anchoring Diaspora Jewish life, but for now I will say a brief note about camp: it is well known that Jewish camp is the single most important predictor of future Jewish identity.

To Rabbi Levitt’s ideas I would add that community institutions might think about ways to better catch the family market, especially after the very well-serviced baby and preschool years: whether it’s the monthly Havdallah & singing & pizza sessions that Agudath Israel is now running (and where I moonlight on Hebrew-rock guitar), or the Friday night family services and potluck dinners at Temple Israel. Jewish supplementary schools might also consider moving to a Shabbat model, providing for more experiential learning.

It’s hard to have one’s cake and eat it too, but with some creative thought, we may be able to enlarge the pie and create more meaningful and satisfying solutions.

**Appearing in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**

Rethinking our Community Speakers. Again.

Another community-wide event and I’m left impressed with the many volunteer and staff efforts to coordinate hundreds of women, set the tables beautifully, organize door prizes, get local business sponsors, corral table captains, and run a great party. But the next morning, I was left with a hangover. And it wasn’t from the kosher shiraz. It was a moral hangover, you might say, a somewhat queasy feeling that we are again missing the point. 

Again we invited a speaker who was intelligent, engaging and dynamic. Miri Eisen is an example for women the world over who wish to chip away at the traditionally male-dominated military echelons. When Eisen retired from the IDF in 2004, she had earned the rank of colonel, a rare feat indeed for an Israeli woman.

But again we invited a speaker to deliver a message that I, for one, am both weary and wary of. Eisen spoke eloquently about the Gilad Shalit trade, framing it in terms of tough “choices” that governments have to make. But then her talk turned troubling. Having mentioned the term Jewish values, she went on to attack Arab culture in fairly unsavoury terms, including suggesting that specifically Arabs desire to view the corpses of their enemies. Referring to the Arab Spring, she noted that Arabic does not have its own term for democracy.

Now let’s unpack this. Can we have a discussion about Jewish values that does more than scratch the surface? Does everyone in the room even know them and feel them, or even agree on what they are? And most importantly, can we talk about Jewish values without needing to denigrate other cultures?

I’m going to leave aside the Gilad Shalit discussion here; readers can consult my perspectve on it on my “Fifth Question” blog on Haaretz.com. And to Eisen’s credit, she did attempt to shed light on how rationality and emotions can work together in interesting ways in diplomacy.

But let’s talk about the business about viewing dead bodies. The evening Eisen said these words, I reflected on what I had been doing that very same afternoon. Taking a short break from working on my book manuscript, I had clicked on footage of a bloodied Gaddafi being captured and attacked. Gross, huh? Indeed, I had to turn it off after a minute. Am I the only Jew who had clicked on this CBS video (incidentally posted by a Jewish Facebook friend)? And, aside from me, are Arabs the only viewers of CBS news? An absurd discussion, I know, but absurdity begets absurdity.

Let’s talk about Arabic and the word for democracy. As Eisen said, Arabs say “democratiya.” Well, Hebrew’s word for democracy is exactly the same. And guess what? So is the word for democracy in French, Spanish, English, give or take a consonant or a vowel; you get the idea.

At the end of the evening, one friend asked me whether I think it is possible to find a speaker who is both balanced and passionate. Awoken in the middle of the night by the musical beds that goes on in our house with two restless kids, I had a few minutes to come up with names of five Jewish women out there who can lend a perspective that I think is sorely needed at our community events.

A Ruth and a Naomi: Ruth Messinger, head of American Jewish World Service, has altered the way we think about tikkun olam and how we put it into practice on the global stage; Naomi Chazan, past Member of Knesset and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, is currently president of the New Israel Fund where she strives to make Israel a more socially just society. (Messinger spoke at another JFO event here in 2007; perhaps it’s time to invite her back.)

Two Rabbis: Sharon Brous and Jill Jacobs, both in the Newsweek/Daily Beast list of “top 50 influential rabbis in America” show how we can create dynamic and innovative sacred communities, and strive for social justice in all realms, even in the Israeli-Palestinian domain. Brous heads the spiritual community of Ikar in LA, and neither does she shy away from transformative thinking on Israel in her downloadable sermons; Jacobs is executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.

Free to Be: Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. Magazine and a past-president of Americans for Peace Now, is at the top of her game in promoting women’s issues and nuanced thinking on Israel. And she consulted on my favourite children’s album: Free to Be You and Me, a transformative piece of work.

All these women have passion. All are complex thinkers. And any of them would help breathe fresh air into how we think about Israel, Jewish values, and social justice, while serving as an antidote to the Self-Othering messaging that this community seems to crave so desperately.

**Appearing in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin

Love, Friendship and a Good Hebrew Name

With my youngest child having just turned five, I find myself reflecting on my time of early parenthood, and specifically on the challenge of choosing baby names. Most parents-to-be enjoy the naming process, but what I think is especially fun for Jewish parents is getting to pick the right Hebrew name.

My son is named Lev in both Hebrew and English (it is Hebrew for “heart”)-- a name my husband and I both loved -- and which we used to honour his paternal great-grandfather and his maternal great-great grandfather. Both were named Joseph, so by naming him Lev Joseph we felt we were evoking the warm spirit of both ancestors. Our Lev seems to enjoy the fact that his name refers to that most loving of symbols and body parts.

But our daughter is not so sure about her Hebrew name.

When my husband and I were expecting our daughter, we knew that we wanted to name her after my paternal grandmother, my Babba Rosie. Her husband, my Zaida Moe died three weeks before I was born. I was hurriedly given the name Mira Michelle (Meira Masha) (after his Hebrew names Meir Moshe). It seemed fitting that my daughter Rory would be named for my Babba Rosie, who had died six months before my husband and I got engaged, and who I miss dearly.

When it came to choosing a Hebrew name, we knew we wanted something more contemporary than what would have been the more natural Rachel (my grandmother’s Hebrew name).

Our daughter’s Hebrew name became etched into our minds five months into my pregnancy. That winter, we attended our friends Nadine and Mike’s wedding in London, England. There, the rabbi spoke movingly about the wedding liturgy. Drawing on the word “re’ut” from the sheva brachot, she explained that what can help people get through the “bad” (“rah”) elements of life is the intimate connection (re’ut) between betrothed companions. Already fragile with pregnancy hormones, I felt my cheeks sting with tears. We both agreed that Re’ut -- a contemporary Hebrew name with exactly the punch of meaning we valued, and with the requisite “R” to honour Rory (and Rosie), would be it.

Once Rory started Hebrew school, though, some challenges appeared. “Do you write her name with or without an apostrophe when transliterating it,” one parent-volunteer emailed me one night? (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.) Is it pronounced “ray-oot” as the Ashkenazi tendency would favour it (and as my daughter comes home pronouncing it) or “Reh-’ut” as the more contemporary Israeli version (and which we prefer) would suggest?

But most strikingly, in the tradition-soaked atmosphere of Hebrew school, Rory soon realized that her name stood apart. As my daughter turned to her classmates -- Sarah, Avigail, Daniel, Michael, Chana, Shimona, she realized she was one of the only students without a Biblical name. Somehow this bit of naming difference suddenly seemed to matter to her.

Last spring, we took a family trip to Israel. Visiting the Old City, we happened upon a Judaica shop. We stopped in to order a Hebrew name necklace for Rory. We mentioned to the shopkeeper that Rory was frustrated that her name wasn’t Biblical. “Ah,” he countered. “It certainly is.” He explained that though there is no actual person named Re’ut in the Bible, a variant on the word is used to describe Abraham’s relationship with God. Of course, the word in an altered form, also appears as “love thy neighbour”.

Rory cherishes her Hebrew name necklace. When her non-Jewish friends come over to play, they sometimes, with my help, think up Hebrew names together. Wilhelmina (meaning protector), becomes Magen (shield). And Rory is very patient with the fact that I speak only Hebrew to her.

Hebrew names, like the language itself, help link us in a chain of belonging. Being called to the Torah for an aliyah, we offer our Hebrew name and those of our parents. And with Hebrew names often having more obvious linguistic meaning than many English names, we get to think of ourselves through lenses of character aspirations. My Hebrew name, Me’irah, means “she illuminates.” It is a good reminder of the burden we all shoulder to help make the world a place of clarity rather than confusion.

Though my kids do not have common names (in the Diaspora at least), my husband and I are secure in the knowledge that our son and daughter, who are such loving companions to one another, who have travelled the world this year bonding with aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends in far-flung places, and who gather friends around them like daisies in a field, have the right Hebrew names.

**A version of this appeared in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**