This morning while searching through my old email, I inadvertently stumbled on this exchange with Rabbi Shula Stevens, who was serving as interim director of education at Gan HaLev, a Jewish congregation to which my family belonged and on whose board of directors I was privileged to serve for over 2 years. Reb Shula asked the members of the board to respond to the following questions as part of an exercise to craft a vision statement for the congregation.
With my kids’ Hebrew School starting up next week, and the high holidays coming up, it seemed like a good time to post this.
Q: What does it mean to be Jewish?
A: Having a pervasive, daily awareness of one’s deep identification – whether by blood ancestry or by choice – with the rich traditions of Judaism, and having that awareness inform our perceptions, our thoughts, and our actions. Ritual practices and community gatherings are important to nurture this awareness. Being Jewish means being able to walk into virtually any synagogue or Jewish gathering, anywhere in the world, and having an instant bond with other Jews. It means being part of a global support network of Jews who share a common understanding beyond that which we share with all fellow human beings.
Q: What aspects of the Jewish path are most important to you?
* Developing relationships with like-minded Jews within my broader community
* Celebrating holidays and important family milestones (bris, baby naming,b’nai mitvot, weddings, etc.)
* Deepening my understanding of Jewish spiritual teachings as embodied in the sacred literature and commentary
* Passing along the love of Jewish traditions and wisdom to my children
* Participating in tzedakah and Tikkun Olam
It’s also important to me that Jews are not considered any better or any worse in general than members of other faiths or backgrounds. I have trouble with the “chosen people” concept and am generally somewhat sympathetic toward efforts by e.g. the Reconstructionist movement to eradicate this from our liturgy.
Q: What was your own Jewish educational experience? What would you like to preserve from that experience by handing it on to the next generation? What, if anything, was missing? Or, what would you like to see done differently?
I was raised in a Conservative Jewish community in St. Paul MN. I attended Sunday School from a very young age (preschool?), Hebrew School from 3rd grade – 7th, & private bar mitzvah lessons leading up to my bar mitzvah. I went on several USY events, including some overnight camps and retreats, and I went to Israel with USY at the age of 16. I was also very involved with our Jewish Community Center – my dad served as its president for a while.
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We attended services pretty regularly, especially during the phase when many of my friends and cousins were having their bnai mitzvot.
I also picked up a lot of yiddish expressions and love of traditional foods from my grandparents. My grandmother’s homentaschen were legendary, and she passed this talent down to my mother.
As a child and young adult, I did not fully understand or appreciate the value of my Jewish education. My parents simply expected me and my brothers to attend religious school and go through the bar mitzvah. There was an emphasis in my education on the discrimination and anti-semitism faced by Jews in previous generations, even though anti-semitism was hardly evident at all in my daily experience in suburban Minnesota.
I was not particularly impressed by my Sunday School and Hebrew School teachers. Most of them were pretty uninspiring; some of them were quite old and cranky and had terrible classroom management skills. By today’s educational standards, the Hebrew School classes were abysmal. Despite having very nice facilities, the majority of the students did not learn much, and goofed off most of the time. Parents tolerated this because they were just glad we were willing to go there at all, I guess.
Services in our synagogue were beautiful but rather “church-like” and in general not very participatory. We had a choir and an organ. The sanctuary was so huge that one felt somewhat lost in the crowd. My bar mitzvah, like that of most of my peers, was largely a rehearsed performance rather than primarily an opportunity for spiritual growth.
All of the above are issues that I think drive people to seek alternative Jewish experiences, which Gan HaLev currently is able to provide largely because of our small class sizes and intimate services and events. What was nice about the larger synagogue & community I grew up with was the infrastructure for all aspects of Jewish living were well taken care of. You could always count on there being a service to go to; it was easy to just “plug in” to the existing scene.
Q: How are the needs of the next generation different? How are they the same? How can Judaism address those needs?
The next generation faces a rising tide of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment. The Holocaust is fading farther from cultural memory. I think this is likely to be one of the central challenges facing the next generation of Jews. Education about the history and current state of life in Israel, and programs for community outreach & dialog are good ways to help address this. It is a very difficult issue, especially when so many Jews are themselves so deeply divided over the policies of the Israeli government.
Q: Please comment on the words G-D, Torah and Israel.
G-D to me is the creative force that brings forth life and love, order, harmony, and joy to the universe. Torah is the embodiment of Jewish history and learning, and I am always amazed by how much can be gained from studying it. Israel is the Jewish “tribal” homeland, in the same sense that Native Americans are connected to their homeland. Its continued survival under Jewish control is vital to the survival of our people. However, I do not think Israel can continue to survive indefinitely in the current climate of intense hatred by its neighbors. Some major changes in policy (some of which have already begun) will be required to attain peaceful co-existence in this region.