“Why didn’t an all-powerful G-d create the world all at once? Why did God go to so much trouble when a snap of the fingers could have brought the world into existence?” That was the question asked by a student in my Florence Melton Adult Mini-School class recently. One student suggested that it teaches us to make an effort to work systematically to better our world. Another said that the created world is a complex place, and we should appreciate all its dimensions.
As the lesson proceeded, we saw the repeated formula for God’s creation of the world--commanding a part of creation into existence, separating elements out of the chaos, naming what was created, and evaluating it. The text describes an intentional, systematic process—and it was good. It contrasts with other existing creation stories--like the Babylonian epic that portray the beginning of the world from spoils of a battle between a female dragon and Marduk, the strongest of the gods. In battle, Marduk uses the four winds to blow Tiamat apart, half of her creating the sky, the other half-- the earth.
What I have thought about since the class, however, has led me to something I will ask my students to respond to when we meet this week. More than the material world is created by God in the first chapter of Genesis. God also creates time, seven “days.” The first day’s light--whose source is something other than the sun-- not only enables us to perceive creation but also allows us to mark the passage of time from one day to the next—light to darkness to light again. As a creation of God, time--like the created world--is ours to master and tend.
The material world and time become inseparable. As modern cosmologists have proven, each requires the other to exist. Later, God will bless the seventh day accentuating its holiness, and later still, we are able to continue creation by living moments of holiness in time.
In The Sabbath: It’s Meaning for Modern Man,Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. “
Monday, October 26, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
MASTERING THE ART OF MIDRASH: FIRST RECIPE FROM JANE SHAPIRO
When Betsy first invited me to write on her blog, it was a wonderful reminder of our years together at the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School. We liked to call ourselves “identical friends”, finishing sentences for each other, looking at situations with similar sensibilities, always challenging each other to more creativity, more precision, more insight. How wonderful to collaborate once again.
But, how to find a voice, an angle into blog-writing? I was not quite sure. I have a friend in Evanston who is in the blogworld every day. He can tell you what is going on deep in the Hasidic world, who is taking a stance on what, who is attacking whom. He eats it up. He has also been telling me that I have something to say about Jewish life and should get my ideas out there. Flattered, but unsure I took a look at some of his favorites. People can be brutal once you put your thoughts not “on the line” but online. No way could I keep that up regularly.
But is there a topic that I do care about so passionately that I would be prepared to write about it for people I do not know? I should have anticipated where I would find inspiration. A Talmudic but—forgive me—trite line that says “ more have I learned from my students” that for years graced tee shirts, tote bags and all sorts of Jewish educator regalia turned out to be right on target. My amazing Friday morning students showed me the way.
Last year this group studied parshat hashavua, the weekly Torah reading, from beginning to end. At the beginning (!) of the cycle, I asked them what they wanted to look for in their reading, what questions they wanted to explore in the text. They had three answers: how the Torah informs tefilah, prayer; how important ideas and values were presented that they could teach to their children and how to understand God better. Theologians and ethicists. The year was rich in insight, powerful and challenging. It fulfilled a teaching dream of mine, and I learned a lot about the Torah.
So onto this year. We had debates on what to do next. The final consensus was: “Parsha with Midrash.”
Yikes! This was new stuff for me, the teacher. I have studied midrash a bit on my own with a Shabbat chevruta, study partner, read a few books about it, used it in Melton teaching, but this was a whole new thing. There is no book with the parsha and juicy midrashim in the margins. How would I sort and select from the thousands of texts for each line? What would be representative of the genre? Did that even matter? What would give insight into the parsha so we were also reviewing? Did the midrashim touch on some of the deep ideas and questions we developed last year, but in a new way? How could I fit into an hour and fifteen minutes a review of the parsha? How much “stuff” would I need to prepare, and how many hours would it take, with teaching, the Mitzvah Initiative project, and now my own school work for the Jewish Theological Seminary?
The first week I prepared and prepared, cut and pasted and fretted. And in class, my students were attentive and helpful. We found--not a pathway to study midrash--but at least the trailhead. I’m not sure if I can use their names, but one student emailed me after class with wonderful suggestions on how to frame and move forward: brilliant! I am on a journey to explore a new style of teaching.
So, in the spirit of Julie and Julia, I have found a topic for this blog: a weekly record of my teaching year. I hope it provides some insight or new ideas for other adult Jewish educators, helps them take some risks in their teaching, try something new, think about teaching from other angles. Based on what I have seen, if this blog is working, I will get some critique as well. But I guess that is what good colleagues do.
But, how to find a voice, an angle into blog-writing? I was not quite sure. I have a friend in Evanston who is in the blogworld every day. He can tell you what is going on deep in the Hasidic world, who is taking a stance on what, who is attacking whom. He eats it up. He has also been telling me that I have something to say about Jewish life and should get my ideas out there. Flattered, but unsure I took a look at some of his favorites. People can be brutal once you put your thoughts not “on the line” but online. No way could I keep that up regularly.
But is there a topic that I do care about so passionately that I would be prepared to write about it for people I do not know? I should have anticipated where I would find inspiration. A Talmudic but—forgive me—trite line that says “ more have I learned from my students” that for years graced tee shirts, tote bags and all sorts of Jewish educator regalia turned out to be right on target. My amazing Friday morning students showed me the way.
Last year this group studied parshat hashavua, the weekly Torah reading, from beginning to end. At the beginning (!) of the cycle, I asked them what they wanted to look for in their reading, what questions they wanted to explore in the text. They had three answers: how the Torah informs tefilah, prayer; how important ideas and values were presented that they could teach to their children and how to understand God better. Theologians and ethicists. The year was rich in insight, powerful and challenging. It fulfilled a teaching dream of mine, and I learned a lot about the Torah.
So onto this year. We had debates on what to do next. The final consensus was: “Parsha with Midrash.”
Yikes! This was new stuff for me, the teacher. I have studied midrash a bit on my own with a Shabbat chevruta, study partner, read a few books about it, used it in Melton teaching, but this was a whole new thing. There is no book with the parsha and juicy midrashim in the margins. How would I sort and select from the thousands of texts for each line? What would be representative of the genre? Did that even matter? What would give insight into the parsha so we were also reviewing? Did the midrashim touch on some of the deep ideas and questions we developed last year, but in a new way? How could I fit into an hour and fifteen minutes a review of the parsha? How much “stuff” would I need to prepare, and how many hours would it take, with teaching, the Mitzvah Initiative project, and now my own school work for the Jewish Theological Seminary?
The first week I prepared and prepared, cut and pasted and fretted. And in class, my students were attentive and helpful. We found--not a pathway to study midrash--but at least the trailhead. I’m not sure if I can use their names, but one student emailed me after class with wonderful suggestions on how to frame and move forward: brilliant! I am on a journey to explore a new style of teaching.
So, in the spirit of Julie and Julia, I have found a topic for this blog: a weekly record of my teaching year. I hope it provides some insight or new ideas for other adult Jewish educators, helps them take some risks in their teaching, try something new, think about teaching from other angles. Based on what I have seen, if this blog is working, I will get some critique as well. But I guess that is what good colleagues do.
Monday, October 19, 2009
SOUNDS OF A NEW YEAR
We begin again. Last Shabbat, we opened the Torah scroll revealing its first columns and—with more emotion than when I hear the shofar, more sentiment than when we read the first verses of Genesis amidst the hubbub of Simhat Torah--I am aware of beginning a new year. It is a moment of renewal, the beginning of a new cycle of Jewish life.
“When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water--”
I am bound to this ancient, wise document. I never tire of its words, phrases, and sentences, and I never fail to uncover something new that has been hidden. This past Shabbat my husband Michael read Torah at North Suburban Synagogue Beth El. He learned to read Torah from his father, Alexander, who learned from his father, Zundel, who learned from his father, Avraham David, each one pronouncing letters in the scroll as vigilantly as the scribe who had first written them, each one adding meaning to the text and our lives through words he chanted.
Perhaps Michael’s careful attention to every letter and trope drew me to the sounds of the Hebrew words that have captured our attention and told the story for thousands of years. I heard the sounds of creation: the shhhhhhhh of wind flowing over water, bereshit…shamyim, the hollow emptiness preceding creation, ohhh...ooo of pre-existence, tohu v’vohu… t’hom. These sounds blend with the cantillation and continue the infinite pulsing of Torah.
The power of Torah goes beyond the intellectual. Its reading by generations of Jews is as eternal as the revolving earth, the ebb and flow of tides, the beating of our hearts.
“When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water--”
I am bound to this ancient, wise document. I never tire of its words, phrases, and sentences, and I never fail to uncover something new that has been hidden. This past Shabbat my husband Michael read Torah at North Suburban Synagogue Beth El. He learned to read Torah from his father, Alexander, who learned from his father, Zundel, who learned from his father, Avraham David, each one pronouncing letters in the scroll as vigilantly as the scribe who had first written them, each one adding meaning to the text and our lives through words he chanted.
Perhaps Michael’s careful attention to every letter and trope drew me to the sounds of the Hebrew words that have captured our attention and told the story for thousands of years. I heard the sounds of creation: the shhhhhhhh of wind flowing over water, bereshit…shamyim, the hollow emptiness preceding creation, ohhh...ooo of pre-existence, tohu v’vohu… t’hom. These sounds blend with the cantillation and continue the infinite pulsing of Torah.
The power of Torah goes beyond the intellectual. Its reading by generations of Jews is as eternal as the revolving earth, the ebb and flow of tides, the beating of our hearts.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Claiming the Gift of Learning
I was given a gift at birth, an inheritance that became mine by listening to stories when I was a child, by talking with friends when I was a teen, by learning and teaching as an adult. It was the same gift given to people smarter, more wealthy, more religious, more ambitious than I. It was the same gift given to presidents, soldiers, shopkeepers, business owners and farmers.
Actually, according to one of the stories my father told me, I was given this gift before I was born. Sometime, somewhere before I began, angels taught me all there was to know. Just before I was born one of them tapped me on my upper lip. I looked in a mirror, and I could see the angel's fingerprint right under my nose.Because of that, my Jewish learning has been a matter of remembering what I already had known, reclaiming facts, insights and wisdom that were already mine. Every time I learn something new from Torah, Tanach, Talmud, or their commentaries, I feel more complete.
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