My favorite quotes: Barnett R. Brickner

With all the talk about how the religious school is broken and in need of redemption, and how we need new models for, and approaches to, supplementary Jewish education, I appreciated discovering this quote from the CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly (#33):

“I do not think there is a rabbi in this Conference [the Central Conference of American Rabbis] who is satisfied with the Sunday school, who is not willing to subscribe his name to the fact that the Sunday school has been, as far as the purposes of Reform Judaism are concerned, a failure.” 

That's Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner writing in ... wait for it ... 1923!

My Full List of Torah Commentaries for Congregation Emanu-El

In my time at Emanu-El, I have contributed nearly thirty essays to our weekly commentary. These commentaries are written not only by the clergy and educational staff, but also our administrators. They vary widely in style, from academic scholarship to thoughtful homiletics to amusing retellings of the story from the point of view of one of the minor characters. In my own commentaries, I’ve often written about the educational programs at Emanu-El and how they attempt to make ancient wisdom relevant to our lives today.

I’m assembling here (after the jump) the full list of my commentaries, with a brief excerpt from each one.

This is my absolute favorite thing I’ve written, from my March 2012 Commentary on Parshat Tzav: “Jeremiah is not opposed to the pursuit of wisdom, strength or wealth, and neither should we be. Jeremiah tells us, if you must be driven by ego, then take pride in how you emulate God in your behavior. Don’t simply attain wisdom for its own sake, he says. Use your wisdom to bring about kindness. Use your strength in the pursuit of justice. And with your wealth, seek equity.”

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Vision-Driven Institutions: Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan

In 2007, I wrote on this blog about the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel. At the time, I expressed my skepticism about my ability to turn this into a regular feature, but here I am, just six short years later, with a description of another innovative institution, the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan. I wrote this piece as part of my coursework for the executive doctoral program at the Davidson School of Education. This is not a comprehensive discussion of the institution, but a description of just one element of the program, and the institutional leader who created it.

Dr. Steven Lorch is the founding headmaster of the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan, a K-8 Jewish Day School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that is currently in its 18th year. I taught at Schechter Manhattan for three years. I loved its team-teaching approach (every class is led by two teachers, both fluent in Hebrew, who share responsibility for all areas of the curriculum), its constructivist philosophy, and its focus on menschlichkeit [kindness and empathy] as a core component of the institution. Yet, no aspect of my work there has influenced me more thoroughly than the experience of leading daily worship and teaching its tefilah [prayer] curriculum. At both Central Synagogue and Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, the two institutions I have served since leaving Schechter Manhattan, I have attempted to adapt the Schechter prayer curriculum to suit the needs of a Reform Jewish supplementary school setting. This sketch focuses solely on this aspect of Dr. Lorch’s work: His role as the creator of the Schechter Manhattan tefilah curriculum.

Parshat Toldot and Halloween

I wrote this week's online Torah Commentary on Parshat Toldot for Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York.

Here is the text in its entirety. Happy Halloween!

Translation: Genesis 27:22-24 (22) So Jacob drew close to his father Isaac, who felt him and wondered. “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” (23) He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau; and so he blessed him. (24) He asked, “Are you really my son Esau?” And he said, “I am.” Excerpted from The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised Edition, editor W. Gunther Plaut (NY: URJ Press, 2005). Used by permission of URJ Press, www.urjbooksandmusic.com.

Original Text:

Commentary

Saul Kaiserman, Director of Lifelong Learning

HERE IN NEW YORK CITY, it is impossible to not notice that it is Halloween this week. But, it should be noted that costumes and trickery are as ancient as the Torah. One of the most famous stories is in this week’s portion, Tol’dot.

Isaac has two sons, Esau and Jacob. Nearly blind and in his dying days, Isaac intends to give his blessing to his favored son, Esau. But Jacob, the younger son, is his mother’s favorite, and with her help, Jacob disguises himself as Esau. He costumes himself as his hairy brother by putting goatskins on his arms and his neck. When Isaac reaches out for Jacob’s hands, he feels the goat hair and is deceived. The trick works! Jacob receives his father’s blessing in place of his brother.

This is just one of the many tales in the Bible in which people wear a disguise or conceal who they are in order to achieve their goals. In some stories, a disguise enables the wearer to engage in forbidden behavior. For example, after King Saul outlaws sorcery, he puts on a disguise so that he may consult a soothsayer. (I Samuel 28:8) At other times, a disguise provides a way to ascertain another’s true intentions, as when Joseph, in the attire of the governor of Egypt, takes care not to be recognized by his brothers. (Genesis 42:7) Still other times, the deceit arises out of a fear for safety, as when Abraham professes to the Egyptians that Sarah is his sister rather than his wife. (Genesis 12:12-13)

From the earliest passages of the Bible, in the story of Adam and Eve, clothing is associated with dishonesty. After disobeying God by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they recognize their nakedness, sew together fig leaves and hide themselves. (Genesis 3:7-8) It is a thin line between clothing and costume, between dressing up and deception.

Jewish Education: An Intrinsically Optimistic Endeavor

I wrote the cover story for the April 2013 Temple Emanu-El Bulletin, Volume 85, No. 8. Here is the text of my article:

Jewish education is an intrinsically optimistic endeavor. Our work as Jewish educators is predicated on the faith that we can inspire our students to personal growth. Further, we believe that by studying the past we can successfully prepare our students for an unknown future. Therefore, we act as translators, of a sort: we strive to make the ancient wisdom of our people relevant to contemporary sensibilities.

I believe the most compelling questions of value and meaning have remained largely the same since the days of the Bible. We look to our people’s history for direction as we ask ourselves the same questions that confronted our ancestors, like “What kind of person do I want to become?” and “What kind of world do I hope for myself and for future generations to inhabit?” Our people have struggled with these questions over the centuries, providing us with a legacy of their responses under varying circumstances.

The role of the Reform Jewish educator is not to pass along definitive answers to these questions, but rather to engage our learners in striving together to make meaning of our Jewish inheritance in all of its complexity. Our religious school is a “laboratory” for the Jewish future, providing experiences and opportunities our students cannot find elsewhere in their lives. The classroom is a center for Jewish life, where our students encounter one another’s ways of being Jewish. In accepting one another for who they are and what they believe, our students empower one another to say “I can be myself here and I can figure out who I might want to be.”