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.