Torah that Matters- giving our children the tools to engage in religious struggle

A frequent trope in many teacher-lounges is about how much better the students used to be in the “good old days”. While I suspect that many of these claims are based on selective memories, there is one such conversation that has stayed with me. A colleague said to me that it used to be that when he spoke about the obligation for married women to cover their hair, there would be protests and arguments from the female students. Now, he said, they just write it down in their notes and spit it out on the test. Interestingly, he was suggesting that he missed the days when students cared enough to argue. While I would disagree with his claim that students don’t care, I think he brings up an interesting point.

There are often discussions about what students should know by the time they graduate high school. I would like to suggest that we also think about what students think by the time they graduate. If I had to pick one thing that I would like my students (and children, for that matter) to possess by the time they are 18, it is a sense that Judaism and Torah matter enough to engage in the religious struggle that is an inherent part of engaging in Torah. In a thoughtful essay, Akiva Weisinger discusses the implications of Yaakov’s wrestling match with the malach, and the subsequent change of his name to Yisrael. He suggests that the struggle with God and his Torah is inherent to the Jewish experience. I sometimes wonder whether we are doing enough to ensure that our children and students will care enough to engage and struggle with our collective beliefs, teachings and ideas.

How do we get there? I think there are things that parents and educators can do to make it more likely that our children and students will take the idea  embodied in the name Yisrael seriously.

To begin with, we need to model the struggle. Whether it is at the Shabbos table or in discussions in the classroom, teenagers benefit from seeing that we practice what we preach. If we share our struggles, as well as talk of how we are dealing with them, it is more likely they will see this behavior as normative and important. We all need downtime. As with everything we do, our children see what we do when we have a few minutes to spare. To the degree that we spend time seriously engaging with sefarim and books that show that we are invested in the struggle, we can hope that our children will do so as well.

Educationally, it is important that we choose texts and subjects that are not merely about knowing facts. When we teach halacha, one of the reasons why it is wrong to teach it as merely a set of rules, is that it fails to show how the mitzvohs themselves have the potential to challenge us to think. Taamei HaMitzvohs should be a part of any discussion of halacha. Additionally, as I have mentioned before, we do a disservice to our students when we only teach the halachic parts of the gemara. It is in the aggadah that Chazal expresses some of their most profound ideas. By seriously engaging in the study of aggadah, we not only expose our students to essential ideas, but also allow them to engage with these beliefs and concepts. Finally, we as educators have to be up to the task. Any question that our students ask should be dealt with seriously, and that puts the onus on us. We need to study both religious and secular texts that we might not have learned in yeshiva or school. While it is obvious that we can not have the answers to all questions, it is imperative that we do as much as we can to show that we have seriously engaged in areas like philosophy, history and science and their implication for Judaism.

Whether it is in college, yeshiva, seminary or later in life, our children and students will likely have moments where they need to decide if Judaism is important enough to be part of forming their worldview. While we can not make this choice for them, the actions we take as parents and/or educators will play a significant role in their decision.

Post by Pesach Sommer.

We Must Do Better- Saying "NO" to a broken shidduch sytem

“I thought of my daughter” the owner of the Ravens said, by way of explanation for why his team cut Ray Rice, who knocked out his wife with a punch, while fighting in an elevator. Ignoring the question of why it took seeing the punch on video to think of his daughter, there is something to be said for thinking of a victim of a crime, as if it had had happened to you personally. In fact, Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky zt”l praises Shimon and Levi for feeling Dinah’s pain as their own, even if they expressed it the wrong way.

It doesn’t take much for me to think of my daughters when I think of the current system for dating within the orthodox world. I have heard horror stories from friends and families about shadchanim who ask the most inane and absurd questions, mothers of marriage-eligible “boys” (a contradiction in terms?) who have absurdly high standards, and the pain of women who can literally go months without being able to get a date. To top it all off, these women are expected to have a resume, accompanied by a picture, references and personal information just to have a chance at getting a first date.

Making things even worse, these women have been educated to have a laundry list of features that the right “boy” must have, including mode of dress, career aspirations (or lack thereof), and particular type of yeshiva. While it is fine and good to anticipate the Yad HaShem in finding the right spouse, we are obligated to put in proper effort, and limiting the potential pool of eligible husbands does not help matters. No less a figure than Rav Pam zt”l, when asked whether yeshivish versus frum-hesder was “lechatchila-bedieved or chocolate-vanilla”, said it was the latter. It pains me to see women discover only after many years of frustration, that they are comfortable with a wider variety of guys than they thought.

Instead of parents, teachers and rabbeim saying “enough is enough”, we talk about the “shidduch crisis”, offer more money for shadchanim based on some fairly arbitrary criteria, and use numbers to explain the problem. Years ago, I sat at a wedding and heard a rebbe at a boys yeshiva say that Rav Herschel Schachter spoke of having shabbatons for college aged men and women. For those who thought mixing in such a manner (I mean, my God, what do we think this is? TU B’Av?!), he replied that it is pikuach nefesh. While that might, at first, sound like hyperbole, for those who are alone, it is anything but.

So what can be done? First, it is time that we ask our daughter’s teachers to stick to teaching and not tell our daughters how and who to date. We are derelict in our duty as parents, when we relegate that role to others. Second, young men and women need to be given the opportunity to meet in normal and natural ways, rather than through the shidduch system. Studies have shown that men consider women who are nice to be prettier than those who are not. The current dating system makes physical attraction the first thing that is learned about a woman, both through her resume (really?!?) and when they meet. Finally, I would love to see women of dating age get together and refuse to play the game. If enough women, including those who are wealthy and from the “right” families decided to opt out until other options were available, things might change very quickly.

I’ve tried, in writing these words, to control my rage and pain that I feel when I think about the current system, but as a father of three wonderful daughters, I am angry. As someone who has seen friends and relatives in real pain over being alone (not just unmarried, but unvalued by the communities in which they live), I can no longer remain quiet. Think of your sisters and daughters and ask yourself if this is what you want for them. The frum community can and must do better.

Post by Pesach Sommer.

Yahrtzeit- A Different Kind of Mother's Day

I don't need help knowing what to feel on my mom's yahrtzeit. I've got feelings a plenty. I'm more unsure what I'm supposed to do, or what the day means, besides a chance to reflect. So I fast for half the day, light a candle and think.

I think back to a Saturday night in Tel Aviv with a friend (which is a code-word for a girl), during my post-high school year in Israel. I don't remember what we were talking about, but all of a sudden it hit me. All those times that my parents did something that I didn't like, they were trying their best. Even their mistakes came from a place of love. Being that this was the olden days, I sent my parents an aerogram where I shared this with them, and apologized for having been a jerk. After they got the letter, my father told me “Your mother cried”. Of course, I swallowed my response, “What about you?”.

I swore up and down that I'd avoid all of their mistakes, and I did, except for when I didn't. I also made new ones, which they never would have made. I find myself wondering whether all my mistakes come from a place of love, or maybe from a murkier, more confused place.

Late in the afternoon, Chavi walks into the room. She has just finished a report on the Chassidim and Misnagdim. She did it on her own, without having to be asked by her parents, which I'd put off on her being female, except I have two other daughters. Somehow, the conversation moves from place to place, including sociology, Spinoza and the Haskala. Then it gets serious. She asks me what we are. I go into a soliloquy, which comes from a place of love. I talk about being confused, and looking for truth and being a parent, and choosing a high school for her, and why I still where a hat on Shabbos, and how it breaks my heart when she cries, but her tears get a vote, and not a veto. I don't know what she thought, although she seemed to take it in, and suddenly the yahrtzeit has meaning. For this year at least.

Teaching our children middos- Who does it the best?

“The words of a child in the market come from either the father or mother”

Sukkah 56b

I am often asked about which school or type of school does the best job teaching middos. The question is based on fundamental misunderstanding.

The gemara in Bava Basra (21a) teaches that Yehoshua ben Gamla established the first yeshivahs, due to the fact that some fathers could no longer fulfill their obligation of teaching Torah to their sons. He is praised for this action, which is described as preventing Torah from being forgotten from the Jewish people. Essentially, when it came to talmud Torah, the educator became in loco parentis.

This was only true for the teaching of Torah, or teaching of texts. Presumably, this did not cover other areas such as middos and davening (which I will address in my next post), which the father (and mother) could still teach.

The gemara in Sukkah, from which the introductory quote is taken, discusses why a family of Kohanim were punished. It tells the story of a woman from their family who spoke publicly in a disrespectful way about God. The gemara asks why the family was collectively punished for her actions as an individual. The answer is that she would not have said this, had she not heard similar things at home. Any parent of pre-school children is familiar with a child repeating something at school, that the parent wishes was private. The gemara here is not discussing a child. It discusses a married woman. It takes for granted that even years later, the attitude that one sees in their home as a child, is ingrained in the psyche.

Ever wonder why there are so many different middos programs that schools use? It seems to me that there are so many because they are trying to accomplish the impossible. Schools can help teach manners. They can help reinforce proper actions or behaviors. They can not teach middos. You as a parent are the only one who can do it.

The scary thing is, all parents do so, whether or not we intend to. The curriculum is our own middos and our children see them all the time, both good and not so good. They see how we talk about rabbis and teachers, how we treat the strange lady at shul, if we make snide comments about others, whether we pause to help a poor person and we behave when we disagree with our spouse..

Who does the best job teaching middos? You do.