MOST I LEARN FROM MY STUDENTS

Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit: Much I learn from my teachers; more from my colleagues; but most from my students.

Entering a Florence Melton Adult Mini-School classroom on a bright snowy day in Chicago, I hear the hum and chatter of eager students greeting each other and catching up on the events of the week. As they brush off the snow, pour themselves a cup of coffee, and take their accustomed seats around the table, they never fail to warm my heart. There are young mothers who request to keep their cell phones on just in case they are needed back home, and recent empty nesters who fondly call themselves “the post carpool generation,” and senior citizens who forget their infirmities while they study.

I never take for granted the wonderful diversity of students before me, all of them sharing a love for Jewish text and a sense of wonder at the way it touches their lives. They represent all ages; they come from all parts of the world; they are at different stages of their Jewish journey.

I am in awe of the representation of life before me, and I am challenged to teach in a way that will meet their unique needs. From them, I have learned that there are common experiences and desires on which I can build and that many of these are a result of living in North America in the 21st century. Judaism is a choice for them—even those coming from a traditional background. How do I help them make informed choices? How do I present Judaism in the best possible light-- including its encouragement of doubt, debate and disagreement?

I am challenged, and yet I have the utmost confidence that I am only a transmitter of an irresistible truth that makes our brief time in this world more meaningful, more worth living. It is a truth that transcends time and space and extends our existence beyond what we know. This also I have learned from my students.

CREATION OF THE WORLD...AND MORE

“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. “