Opinion
Where Do We Start?
By Nachama Skolnik Moskowitz
The last few weeks brought a flurry of postings on Jewish educator Facebook groups with requests from synagogue educators (and others) for teaching ideas, whether for the upcoming semester or early planning for next fall. So much fit in the category of what adults feel children “need to know” – holidays, Torah and Bible stories, life cycle, pieces of Jewish history.
I admire the early efforts and collegial sharing, but the ostensibly-new feels heavily anchored in the old. As educators, clergy, parents and volunteer leadership, we need to acknowledge that this year’s pandemic upended much of what we assumed about education and learning. Our children and their families (us, too!) have had a year like no other and learning shifted in a variety of ways. In the spirit of “if not now, when?” how might we grab this opportunity to rethink our enterprise?
- Must we start our planning from a perspective of what we think children need to know or do? “They need to know about Golda Meir.” [History, check. Israel, check. A woman, check.] But really, what does Golda Meir mean to a nine- or twelve-year-old? Need-to-know content is not my favorite starting point for lesson planning, nor are lists of Bible stories, holiday facts, or prayers to decode. From this often unquestioned starting point, adult-chosen content leads the planning.
- Might we start planning from the child’s needs as a human being? In many ways, this is the strength of the new K-6 curriculum, “La-bri’ut: To Our Health and Wellness,” providing children with tools and strategies to build resilience. La-bri’ut upholds Jewish education as the process of becoming in dialog with Jewish tradition: what do our learners need as human beings, and how can Jewish wisdom and traditions provide sustenance and guidance? Might we start with children at the center of our planning and respectfully consider learning opportunities that touch their hearts, souls and acknowledge their strengths? In this starting point, the children lead, not the content.
- Could we start planning from the standpoint of empowering our learners to take on and personalize Jewish life by providing them with the scaffolding “to re-envision, remix and renew our tradition for themselves?” This is a pretty powerful starting point, one that recognizes the cultural shifts in today’s society – that people can easily enough locate information, but their pleasure comes from being in the proverbial driver’s seat – making personal connections and meaning (consider the predominance of playlists, TikTok videos, blogs, podcasts and crafting). The rabbis of the Talmud argued together as they interpreted tradition – for instance, do we begin Hanukkah with eight candles and decrease to one, or begin with one and increase to eight? In this planning process, personal agency takes the lead.
- And, having seen during this pandemic-influenced year that not all learning needs to happen between 9:00am to 12:00pm on Sunday mornings, in what contexts might Jewish education happen? Does part-time synagogue education have to look like school – with classrooms, desks, worksheets and a teacher in charge of children’s minds? Could some learners meet at 7:00pm on Tuesday via Zoom and others meet on Friday afternoon at the art museum? Do all eight year olds need to be learning the same thing? In this, the wisdom gained from the pandemic has a seat at the table.
What might this look like in practice? Consider a traditional first grade activity where the educational planning process started with “needed” Shabbat knowledge and skills (ritual objects, blessings, the ritual itself), with a hands-on twist. In this, over a number of weeks, the children are given supplies to decorate candlesticks, a hallah cover and a wine cup to be placed in a Shabbat box and sent home for family use. But what if, instead, the planning discussion began with the child or family’s intangible needs for rest and rejuvenation? In what ways could Shabbat offer inspiration around the dinner table on a Friday night, and how might each child/family re-envision, remix and renew Judaism? Does this evoke a Shabbat box, or something else? Also, must this be a first-grade-only learning experience, or might learning be organized by families, neighborhoods or grade clusters, after all, many of us are coming off of a year of pod-like learning scheduled for family convenience!
Yes, lots of questions with no ready answers.
As we all take a breath and begin considering “what’s next” I implore us not to assume that our goal should be returning to Jewish learning as it was in the fall of 2019. We were given a gift of an unusual year, one that has not yet ended. On behalf of our learners and their families, let’s take advantage of this opportunity to reimagine Jewish education, engagement and learning. If nothing else, the goal of Jewish learning should no longer be laser-focused on the transmission of Jewish knowledge. Our youngest La-bri’ut learners demonstrated this year that they can be pretty sophisticated thinkers. It is time for us to change our assumptions of what is or could be and help our children develop their humanity, with the wisdom and supports of our Jewish heritage.
Dr. Miriam Heller-Stern offered this in a podcast last June, “The challenge today is not access to information … [Rather] how do our learners learn to think with the mindset that will help them utilize their Jewish wisdom to navigate the world, to develop their identities, to develop their values, develop their passions, to build community and to think creatively about the problems they face in society, to bring that Jewish lens to bear because there is so much richness, so many texts and so many ideas that can help us in this moment…”
We are facing down an “if not now, when” opportunity. On behalf of our children and their families, where will we start?
Nachama Skolnik Moskowitz is the Senior Director and Director of Curriculum Resources for the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland. She is the project director for “La-bri’ut: To Our Health and Wellness” and facilitates the #OnwardHebrew initiative.