A question regarding Chesed

When I switched from the synagogue rabbinate to my primarily-educational role in Toronto's YU Torah MiTzion Beit Midrash, I wrestled with a particular dissatisfaction that came from leaving the shul rabbinate. In retrospect, several years down the road, I have come to realize that part of my discomfort came from the following question:

Is teaching a class an act of chesed (generosity)?

I have my own thoughts, and I may expand on them later this week, but what do you think?

The last-minute dvar torah

I am asked, from time to time, to fill in with last-minute divrei torah; it happens on a weeknight between minchah and maariv, or at a minyan on Shabbos, or for a group of students in school. And I generally decline.

Certainly, I have delivered far too many last-minute divrei torah over the years to claim inexperience. But I believe that in general, the last-minute dvar torah is not a good idea.

The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 139:1) rules that one is not permitted to lein from the Torah unless he has reviewed the reading multiple times, out of respect for the Torah.

The mishnah teaches that Chasidim haRishonim [early pious people] waited for a time before davening shemoneh esreih, and we have psukei d'zimra for similar preparation, out of respect for Gd. How much more so when we are talking about teaching Torah!

Tefillah is about my personal relationship with HaShem, and perhaps the needs of those for whom I daven, and it requires preparation; giving a dvar torah is about the spiritual life and Torah knowledge of the entire tzibbur [community] - even if said tzibbur doesn't see it that way - how much more so is preparation required.

And it's not only about the stakes, it's also about the odds of success with a last-minute effort:

 

HaShem understands our heartfelt intent, other human beings tend to grasp only our words and expressions, if that.

 

HaShem is merciful, other people, often, are not.

 

HaShem wants our prayers; human beings are often subjected to divrei torah against their will and choice.

 

If I have a poor prayer, I blew an opportunity, but I have another chance later that day; if I give a poor dvar torah, they may never pay attention to me again.

Therefore, I want to spend time first thinking about what I will say, to whom I am speaking, how it will be received, where I should stand, whether the door should be open or closed, whether I should be formal or casual, and so on.

To me, and I know it's not everyone's view, I'd rather skip a dvar torah than deliver one without significant forethought.

That's my thinking, anyway. Make sense?

Rabbinics 101: How to teach a class

[I can sympathize with this: Too Cool for Shul at Modern Uberdox]

I don't claim to be any sort of expert on teaching, but I have 15 years of experience in adult education across a pretty broad range of subjects and audiences at this point, and I do think I've absorbed some good lessons along the way. Here are four items, about presentation rather than content; feel free to add, or challenge, in the comments:

Make sure your enthusiasm is visible I learned this one when teaching a challenging, iyun series; after one class, one of the participants commented that I had clearly enjoyed that one. I realized then that I had not been very enthusiastic in presenting previous classes; I had been too caught up in the difficulty, and in insecurity about possibly making a mistake.

כמים הפנים אל הפנים, feelings are contagious. Human beings like to interact with human beings who are having a good time; people who seem stressed, tired or anxious make us feel likewise. Make sure people can see that you are having a good time.

And if you aren't having a good time, it's time to find out why and do something about it.

Over-prepare, but don't over-invest I am a strong believer in over-preparing, coming to class ready for tangents and questions that may never materialize; it's best to know the topic well, and have much more to say than you will ever get to voice. However, this comes with a risk – that we become attached to our content, on which we have worked so hard, and so we end up trying to cram in far more than we should. Our explanations lose clarity and our ideas are not expressed in a compelling way, and the result is a negative class experience. A rabbi should not become so invested in his material that he loses sight of the basic goal: Education.

And as anyone who has ever been in a class of mine knows, I violate this rule regularly.

I don't know, I'll check Never feel forced to answer a question on site; it's okay to do research and then get back to people, whether in matters of halachah, text, history or philosophy. This is also good because it generates post-class communication, which I find enhances the entire experience and helps create lasting relationships. It also demonstrates tangibly that the class is more than an intellectual exercise or fulfillment of a job responsibility; it matters.

Interactive! The people who come to classes may be doctors or lawyers or plumbers, teachers or mechanics or psychologists or accountants or businesspeople or middle managers or taxi drivers. Whoever they are, their lives are interactive – they are used to talking and listening and analyzing and responding and questioning and advising.

People may be accustomed to sitting in a movie for two hours or in front of a television for an hour, but human beings don't listen to other human beings talk at them for 45 minutes or an hour. Interactive is the key – icebreakers, questions, invitations to analyze.

What would you add?

To Educate or to Inspire?

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here!]

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was at our shul in Toronto this Shabbos, and one of his themes was the use of music to reach our souls.

At one point, the Chief Rabbi commented that Orthodoxy had made a critical mistake for decades, trying to reach people on the cognitive level – and, as he put it, "Cognitive is the English word for dull."

I don't think it's a mistake to reach out intellectually, framing Judaism's teachings in academic terms and attempting to teach text. For that matter, I don't think the Chief Rabbi believes that, either. To inspire the soul without informing the intellect would be to forsake the substance which anchors us as Jews, to abandon the eternal message of Sinai in favor of its ephemeral firework accompaniment, and to veer dangerously into cult territory.

But I do believe that reaching someone on an emotional level generally has a greater and more desirable impact than reaching him on an intellectual level.

Teaching a text can educate, but reaching a soul can awaken.

Teaching a text can inform practice, but reaching a soul can inspire it.

Teaching a text can reduce doubts, but reaching a soul can enable a person to live beyond them.

And while text might be a means of reaching some souls, I don't believe it is the means to reach most.

So why do rabbis traditionally spend so much time teaching text, and comparatively little time singing?

One reason is that inspiration doesn't require a rabbi; it can come from a garden or a song or a meditation or a prayer. Knowledge often requires specialized instruction, but inspiration may be found everywhere.

Another reason is that - in some ways - it's easier to teach text; read a book, explain it, rinse and repeat. It doesn't involve the deep personal relationship, and the associated investment of energy and passionate caring, needed to learn a soul and speak its language and embrace it and understand what moves it. But the results of speaking honestly to a soul are so much more significant – and, personally, I find the experience much more rewarding.

No surprise conclusion here – the two approaches go hand in hand. One who would impart Judaism must succeed at both. But I am with Rabbi Sacks: Shifting some focus from cognition to inspiration would do our Jewish world good.

Why I don't recycle

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here; enjoy!]

Yes, of course I recycle plastic, cardboard, etc; I even compost; this is about recycling class material.

In my Modest Proposal for an Eco-Rabbinate post a few years back, I wrote, "Rabbis need to recycle more. I propose that rabbis should be permitted - nay, encouraged! - to recycle speeches and divrei torah after allowing them a two-year composting period."

That post was written tongue-in-cheek, but the issue of rabbinic recycling of material is actually one I think about quite a bit. I've taught enough shiurim and given enough derashos over the years - 363 on torontotorah.com's on-line audio archive from the past two years, and a lot more was never recorded - that I certainly could make use of old material for a good, long time to come.

But I don't like to do it; I don't like to re-use an old shiur, or derashah. I do it on occasions when starting fresh isn't an option – 2 out of my 5 Shavuos night shiurim this year will be re-treads – or when people request a re-run, but even then it doesn't sit well with me.

* I don't like it because it feels lazy, and I don't like seeing myself as lazy.

* I don't like it because then I miss the chance to learn something new. Giving shiurim should be an expanding experience for the maggid shiur, too.

* I don't like it because I'm apt to pull out the shiur without really reviewing it, and therefore I won't deliver it well.

* I don't like it because I'm worried someone will know that I've given it before, and think less of me for it.

* I don't like it because going to the old-shiur tank for that shiur now means I can't do it again soon, and maybe I'll have a greater need for it down the line.

* I don't like it because the issues and questions that are on my mind today aren't the same as the ones that were on my mind two, five, ten and fifteen years ago. This is especially true for derashos.

But mostly, I don't like it because I have a potent insecurity, a confident voice inside my head that says, day after day, that my learning isn't solid enough yet. No matter how well I prepare a topic, I always feel I don't quite have it. Probably comes from being a middle child… As a result, I always look back at old derashos and shiurim and feel like they weren't good enough, like they were probably missing something, like I must have misunderstood or misapplied a source. So it's rare for me to back to the well; I much prefer to start from scratch with something new.

Makes life harder, of course.

C'est la vie.

Back to the Daf!

[Very worth seeing: The Death of Abu Rahma, on The Muqata]

I started teaching the Daf this morning again, after a 16-month hiatus.

Wow, did I miss it. I feel like Jim Tomsula (bottom of the page here), only I get to keep on going after the first game.

I’m not a fan of making Daf Yomi one’s only regular Torah study; it’s too quick and superficial. But for giving people an authentic sense of the breadth of Torah, its wisdom and challenges and contradictions and so on, there’s no substitute. And teaching it is a good way to make sure not to get bogged down in small, narrow issues, but instead to keep the big picture in mind.

Further, and not to be underestimated, it’s great to have a group that meets every day, same Bat Time and same Bat Channel, to learn together. While I don’t know the group here yet, I know that in our group in Allentown, where I did the Daf for 8+ years, everyone had a special “learning personality,” a special role, questions that everyone knew they would ask, items that everyone knew they would pick up on. This is natural in a group that studies and discusses and debates for an hour (or, in this case, 45 minutes) on a daily basis.

Rabbis often debate the issue of using a significant of their time to prepare and teach the Daf Yomi to a small group of people, and particularly in shuls where it’s an all-male group, further limiting those who can take advantage of their connection in this way. Assuming 30 minutes to prepare and an hour to teach, that’s 90 minutes of the rabbi’s waking time. Even assuming there are 25 in the group – quite large for most shuls - that’s still a small percentage of the population.

To me, though, it’s a worthwhile investment – because of what it does for the rabbi’s own learning, and because of the powerful bond this creates among the group. Going back to our Allentown group – many shul leaders came out of that group, and I think part of that was because of pollination among the group itself. (And, of course, because people who came to Daf regularly were people who knew how to make a commitment, and how to make time.)

When I did the daf in Allentown, we recorded the audio but kept it in-house, for Daf regulars only. That was partly because of concern about how the gemara might be taken out of context and misunderstood, and partly because I never prepared in advance. With this run, I intend to record and post the audios on our kollel site, torontotorah.com. Today's audio is here.

Now, the only slight problem is that this Daf is at 6 AM, which means I need to get up at 5 AM. Ugh. But definitely worth it.

Mussar [rebuke] for rabbis, teachers and parents

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

During mussar seder, I've been learning Chazon Ish's Emunah uBitachon for the past several weeks. I did it almost twenty years ago, but (a) I didn't complete it, and (b) I had no clue what I was reading. [I hope and expect I will feel (b) when I read it again next time...]

Here's a potent rebuke from the book for all educators. [It's my own translation, and I went for a linear read rather than re-structure the sentences to suit English. Compare with the Hebrew I appended at the end.]

One of the most basic agents of destruction is a public teacher whose character is incomplete. The destruction which occurs with an incomplete teacher is twofold:

• He does not know the principles of ethics and he does not know in what areas he should be exacting, and he inattentively directs his students into behaviors which are repugnant according to ethical principles.

• Even if his Torah is good and accurate, his words do not enter the heart of the student because his inside is not like his outside.

Further, his student will learn more from his actions than from his lessons. The mentor-student relationship requires a generous character and refined traits, and one who rebukes his student coarsely and with outraged screams for some impropriety mixes bad and good; even if there is some benefit in this rebuke and the student is awakened to his sin and decides never to repeat it, there is still harm in that the student becomes accustomed to coarseness and anger, as he has received from his mentor by seeing him utilize these repugnant methods in his rebuke. We are taught that serving a scholar is more effective than studying with him, and this student will always emulate his mentors. And, generally, the rebuke itself will be defective for it will be accompanied by negative traits.

Also: When this student continues to stand before an incomplete mentor, he continually inherits bad traits from the mentor. And because the mentor considers himself complete and full of all good traits, and he performs repugnant acts in arrogance and in a derogatory way, his student also becomes accustomed to practice repulsive things with ‘the purity of terumah.’ This mentor will bear fruit and multiply others in his form and image.

And because this mentor is empty of the Torah wisdom that comes from struggling in halachah, he stumbles into the depths of opposing others who have struggled in halachah, and he bequeaths the fruit of this sin to his students as well.

And the Hebrew:

מן המפסידים היותר עיקריים היות מלמד לרבים בלתי שלם במדותיו, המחנך הבלתי שלם הפסדותיו כפולים, בצד אחד אינו יודע תורת המוסר ואינו יודע על מה להקפיד, ומשגרם בהנהגות מגואלות על פי תורת המדות בלי משים, ואף אם לקחו טוב ונכון, אחרי שאין תוכו כברו, אין דבריו נכנסין אל לב החניך, ולא עוד אלא שלומד ממעשיו יותר משיעוריו, והתיחסות הרב לתלמידיו דורשת תכונות תרומיות ומצוי המדות, וכאשר מיסר את תלמידו בביטוי גס וזעקת רוגז על העול אשר עשה, מתערב כאן רע וטוב, אם יש כאן תועלת תוכחה והחניך מתעורר על חטאו וגומר בלבו שלא לשנות חטא זה, יש כאן ענין רע שהחניך מתרגל בגסות ובקפדנות המקבל מרבו שרואהו משמש במגונות אלו בשעת תוכחתו, וגדול שמושה יותר מלימודה, והתלמיד מחקה תמיד את רבותיו, ועל הרוב גם התוכחה לקויה כשמתלוה עמה ממדות הלא טובות, וכאשר חתמיד החניך לעמוד לפני מחנך בלתי שלם יתמיד לנחול מדות הרעות מן המחנך, ובהיות המחנך מחזיק עצמו לאיש השלם, כליל מדות הטובות, וכל גנותות שעושה הן נעשות בגאוה ובוז, גם חניכו מתרגל בתעתועיו לעשות תועבות על טהרת תרומה, והמחנך הזה יפרה וירבה תולדותיו כדמותו וכצלמו, ובהיות המחנך ריק מחכמת התורה בעמל ההלכה ונכשל על ידי זה בצללי התנגדות לבעל ההלכה נוחל ומנחיל גם לחניכיו פרי עונו.

Why a rabbi teaches Jewish History, Part II

In Part I, I talked about why I teach classes about Jewish History. In the Comments section, we entered a debate about the practical benefits of studying history as it is usually taught in the one-shot class format.

I came across two relevant items the other day:

This from the Chazon Ish's Emunah uBitachon (פרק א, סעיף ח); the translation is mine:
Chronicles of time and histories of the world guide a wise person a great deal in his path; such a person establishes the basis of his wisdom on the events of the past.
However, because people love to be creative and to speak publicly, many falsehoods have collected in the books of these events; people do not have a native distaste for falsehood, and many people love it and treat it with friendship. Therefore, a wise person must sift in the books by these authors in order to accept the truth and winnow out the deceptions.
Here there is great room for imagination; it is the nature of imagination to hasten and speak a sentence quickly, before the intellect has been able to prepare the scales of justice, to weigh the matter appropriately. Imagination passes its judgment in a moment, whether from truth or from deception.

And then this from the New York Times, regarding the work of two economists in assembling data on centuries of economic disasters:
Like a pair of financial sleuths, Ms. Reinhart and her collaborator from Harvard, Kenneth S. Rogoff, have spent years investigating wreckage scattered across documents from nearly a millennium of economic crises and collapses. They have wandered the basements of rare-book libraries, riffled through monks’ yellowed journals and begged central banks worldwide for centuries-old debt records. And they have manually entered their findings, digit by digit, into one of the biggest spreadsheets you’ve ever seen.
Their handiwork is contained in their recent best seller, “This Time Is Different,” a quantitative reconstruction of hundreds of historical episodes in which perfectly smart people made perfectly disastrous decisions. It is a panoramic opus, both geographically and temporally, covering crises from 66 countries over the last 800 years...
In the past, other economists often took the same empirical approach as the Reinhart-Rogoff team. But this approach fell into disfavor over the last few decades as economists glorified financial papers that were theory-rich and data-poor.
Much of that theory-driven work, critics say, is built on the same disassembled and reassembled sets of data points — generally from just the last 25 years or so and from the same handful of rich countries — that quants have whisked into ever more dazzling and complicated mathematical formations.

The two pieces both highlight the value of studying history in order to determine proper future behavior, but from two complementary approaches. The Chazon Ish points out the need for עיון, for examining the data, filtering it, studying it and so developing greater understanding. But the economists note the need to make sure we assemble proper data, taking a בקיאות approach to ensure that we are working with sufficient material from which to draw our conclusions.

Neither approach stands alone, of course. I bring them here not to contrast them, but to underscore my message from Part I: Learning history by attending a class here and there, or reading a book on occasion, does not serve the goal of gaining wisdom from history. Such superficial attempts may do more harm than good.

In order to gain the benefits of learning history, one must commit to real study. Like most other fields. This is why I say that my reasons for teaching History are not for the inherent value of studying History, but rather for the secondary benefits of deepening my understanding of Torah and of drawing people into more general learning.

Why a rabbi teaches Jewish History

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

I spent Shabbos in the beautiful and warm community of Hamilton, Ontario. It was Italian Shabbat, with a lunch featuring Italian foods, so I tailored my shiurim for Italian topics: The Badge, the Ghetto and the Printing Press: Jewish Life in Medieval Italy, Rabbeinu Meshulam ben Klonymus, Tosafot Rid and Rav Ovadia Sforno: The Torah of Middle Ages Italy, and Esav = Edom = Rome: Jews and the Catholic Church [we looked at Yosi ben Yosi's אהללה אלקי, as a theological polemic].

The trend of those topics toward Jewish History led several people to ask whether I was a History major in college, or, in the words of one, “Isn’t history an unusual topic for a kollel man?” The answer to the former is that I was an English major at first, and I concluded as a Computer Science major. The answer to the latter is Yes. And the answer to the unspoken question of, “Is this really within the Torah sphere of shiurim?” is, in my opinion, Maybe.

Certainly, learning חכמי אשכנז הראשונים or מסורת הפיוט or בעלי התוספות or Cecil Roth doesn’t impress the way that learning תקפו כהן does. And I wouldn’t consider Jewish History an appropriate topic for seder time. But at the same time, I think knowing history adds authenticity to any Torah study which relates to human beings – teshuvos (responsa), minhagim, tefillah (prayer) and more.

That’s how I first got into learning and teaching history – it was a matter of authenticity. During my rabbinic internship in Englewood, New Jersey (under the great Rabbi Shmuel Goldin) I taught a series on Science and Halachah, and I found that I was interested in getting the science right and teaching it as part of the shiur’s Torah. This made me more confident in my knowledge of the broader topic, and I think it also helped listeners feel more confident (correctly or incorrectly!) that I knew what I was talking about.

That practice of filling in the broader background carried over into other classes. For example, when I taught about halachic practices and minhagim of certain locations I also learned about the Jewish communities of those locations. When I taught classes about particular halachic themes – Jewish dress, for example – I also learned the relevant background.

As a second motivation, in my shul rabbinate I found that history was מושך את הלב, it drew people’s hearts. See Rashi to Shemot 13:5 - We are supposed to help people learn by starting with topics that draw their hearts. History does that; unlike during my student career, in which history was deemed dull, as an adult I found that people wanted to know the background of Jewish communities and their leaders. Not as gossip, but as fascinating information.

Certain people wouldn’t necessarily turn out for a class on the different approaches of biblical commentators, but they would absolutely come out to classes on the lives of those commentators, which would then lead to study about their styles as well. Many people would not necessarily come out for a series on The Laws of Shabbos, but they would turn out in real numbers for shiurim on Shabbat in 13th Century France, for example, and learn the relevant halachic debates along the way. So although I needed to spend considerable hours learning the history accurately and completely, the payoff was that it brought people in.

So I learn and teach History because I consider it a crucial part of authentically understanding and explaining Torah, and because it attracts people to shiurim.

There are lots of other, minor reasons, but those are the big two. And there’s one popular motivation I don’t share: I don’t believe that learning the lessons of history will keep us from repeating the errors of the past. Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, but so are the rest of us. It’s just human nature.

What should be on the Rabbi's agenda?

[This is a quasi-rant. I apologize in advance. For other material, see this week's Toronto Torah.]

Ever since my first rabbinic interview, people have wanted to know my agenda.

On proba visits, I was asked a range of interview questions on this topic, including:
• Will you speak about Current Events?
• Will you promote Aliyah?
• What do you see as the major challenges facing Modern Orthodoxy today?
• What do you see as the major challenges facing the Jewish community today?
And so on…

These are significant items, but I believe – and I believed this when I was a shul rabbi as well – that none of these items belong near the top of a rabbi’s agenda. Rather, the rabbi's agenda should be about helping us become better Jews, better people, on a day-to-day basis.

This includes speaking out regularly about:
• Our awareness of Gd;
• Our sensitivity to each other’s needs;
• Our sincerity;
• The depth of our thoughts and our lives.

I want a shul rabbi to speak regularly about emotions, and less-regularly about elections.
I want a shul rabbi to teach more classes about davening and about honesty, and fewer classes about the ethical issues in separating Siamese Twins.
I want a shul rabbi to spend more time on his shul’s youth, and less time on newspaper columns.

I wouldn’t claim that I was perfect in any of these areas in my rabbinic years.

Further, I know that we also need the speeches about the elections, the classes on conjoined twins and the public stands on issues of the day. But these areas are, in many ways, low-hanging fruit bringing easy if superficial returns. If this is the rabbi’s agenda, he may well be popular as a public figure, but I believe he will have failed as a spiritual leader.

And I would add one more note: I believe that the same should be the agenda for all of us “private citizen” Jews.

Titles vs. Substance, and Prayers for Shavuot night

Common sense dictates that marketing is no substitute for substance, but that doesn’t stop people, including rabbis and synagogues, from investing far too much of their time and energy into advertising instead of into תוכן (content).

Example: Fledgling rabbis often give their shiurim provocative or mystifying titles, as a way of drawing an audience. The problem is that if the class isn’t as fascinating as the title, the result is (1) a dissatisfied audience, and (2) an audience that won’t trust your titles in the future.

I learned that lesson early on. In my second year in the rabbinate, I gave a talk before Rosh HaShanah on the 13 attributes of Divine mercy. I wanted a title that would be more engaging than “13 attributes of mercy,” so I billed it as “Diamonds and Water Polo.” The talk did have something to do with each of those (viewing the 13 as 13 facets of a single diamond, or as individual members of a team, a la 13 players on a water polo team, oriented toward the same goal), but it really was not all that relevant, and I recall one couple who were turned off by it.

I was reminded of this when a friend showed me satiric tefillot for Shavuos night; among the practices they pick on is that of the hyper-dramatic and misleading title.

There is a standard prayer upon entering/exiting the beit midrash (Berachot 28b - translation from here):
“It should be your will, the Lord my God, that no mishap should occur because of me, and I should not err in a halakhic matter and my colleagues will rejoice over me, and I should not declare the impure pure or the pure impure, and my colleagues should not err in a halakhic matter and I will rejoice over them."

What does he say when he leaves? "I am thankful to You, the Lord my God, that You have placed my lot among those who dwell in the beit midrash and not with those who hang around street corners. They arise early, and I arise early. I arise early for words of Torah, and they arise early for idle matters. I toil, and they toil. I toil and receive reward, and they toil and do not receive reward. I run, and they run. I run to the life of the world to come, and they run to the pit of destruction.

These prayers for Shavuot night are a comedic riff on those tefillot, with segments of Tefillat haDerech (the wayfarer’s prayer) interspersed as well; the translation is my own:

Before study:

May it be Your will that no mishap should occur because of the gabbaim, that the drinks should be hot and the borekas should be excellent all night, and save me from poor and unidentifiable borekas lest I err and declare the cheese potato and the potato cheese, and lest I stumble and be seduced to attend a shiur with a provocative, promising title like, “Was Goliath a dwarf?” only to reveal that Goliath was actually a giant.

And save me from shiurim which often come into this world, the titles of which end with the word, “Really?” as in, “Yosef the Tzaddik: Really?” the contents of which are not like their exterior, which, counter to their title, are actually frighteningly dull.

And lest I accidentally enter a shiur with an explosive title like, “The historiography of the book of Kings II in the light of deterministic research,” taught by a rabbi who is also a professor or a professor who is also a rabbi, the content of which is like their exterior, and not only is their title incomprehensible, but so is their content.

And may I merit to enter shiurim in which one can sleep from the first sentence to the last, such as, “The laws of borer on Shabbat,” or, “The view of the Ritva in the discussion of Pesach which occurs on Shabbat.” And make available to me a tall person who will sit before me and hide me while I sleep, and I will rejoice over him, and arrange a shorter person behind me, and he will rejoice over me.


And after study:

I am thankful to You, that You have have placed my lot among those who dwell in the back of the beit midrash, and not with those who sit in the first row, for I sleep and they sleep, I sleep for half of the shiur, including snoring, and they sleep for half a second and immediately nod to the speaker as though they are listening. I eat and they eat; I eat whenever I am able to escape to the dining room, and they eat the remnants that I leave for them. I am bored and they are bored; I am bored and read the advertisements in the Shabbat bulletins, and they are bored and they are bewildered by the boring source sheet before them.

And save me today and every day from a bad chazan who sings melodies at 4 AM, and from a bad friend who pokes my shoulders whenever I sleep, and from an abnormal prayer in the Carlebach style. And return me home in peace, speedily in our days, and make my wife’s cheesecake sweet in my mouth, Amen.

Once upon a rabbi (Part 1?)

Occasionally, when I have the chance to read my children a bedtime story, I instead tell them a story from my own rabbinate. I remove all identifying details, of course, and try to remove the nightmare-inducing aspects of rabbinic life, but what remains is often a simple tale with a good moral, about right for the ages of some of my children.

Here’s an example of a story told to my kindergartener; if it goes over well, I’ll turn it into an occasional feature on the blog:

Once upon a time there was a rabbi. This rabbi loved to teach Torah; he spent a lot of time learning and preparing, and then he taught the people who came to learn Torah. Sometimes they learned Chumash, sometimes they learned about Shabbat or Yom Tov, sometimes they learned about Jewish beliefs, and sometimes they learned Gemara or Jewish law or Jewish history or Hebrew. Some people who came to learn knew a lot, and others knew a little, but they all came together to learn. The students all had a good time together, too.

But the rabbi had a problem: He spent so much time talking and talking in these classes, and he had such a good time, that sometimes he got carried away and wasn’t careful with the things he said. Sometimes he meant to say one thing, but something else came out, and he was misunderstood. And sometimes he even slipped and said things that upset one of the students.

One day, the rabbi was teaching a class about sharing, and not being greedy. Before starting the class, he mentioned that it was too bad Shlomit, a certain student who came to a lot of classes, wasn’t there. Then he started to teach about being greedy.

After the class was over, someone told the rabbi that it sounded like he was saying Shlomit was greedy. The rabbi was very upset; he had not meant that at all! What if people would think that Shlomit was greedy? Or what if people would think he was nasty for having said that?

So the rabbi immediately wrote down a list of all of the people who had been in class. He emailed all of them, and then called all of them as well, to make sure they would understand that this was not what he had meant. And he called Shlomit, too, to apologize.

Everyone said that they knew what he had really meant, and Shlomit forgave him, and they lived happily ever after.

What's the first thing to teach children about Judaism?

I have the pleasure of helping young men prepare for bar mitzvah, generally by teaching them how to lein (read from the Torah) and, sometimes, lead davening. I also get to work with them in preparing a dvar torah, and I take the opportunity to train them in various Jewish ideals and in practical Jewish life as well.

The experience is generally a combination of pedagogy, amusement and frustration (and that’s just in dealing with the parents!). My task is a convergence of passing along new information, conveying high expectations without burdening them with stress, and helping them succeed even as they handle everything that comes with the onslaught of adolescence.

Generally, the kids come in with some level of background; whether they’ve been to day school or supplementary Hebrew school, they have some awareness of Jewish concepts, at the least. Once, though, I had a truly different experience: An unaffiliated family came to me with a child who had no Jewish knowledge.

No Jewish knowledge. None.

We’re talking blank slate, tabula rasa, didn’t know who Avraham and Sarah were, didn’t know who Moshe was or what Mount Sinai was. No – he did know what Israel is, in the sense that it’s a country with a lot of Jews living there. But beyond that, nothing.

His parents understood that he wouldn’t be able to lein from the Torah coming out of this; they just wanted him to know “what a Jew needs to know.”

So what do you teach a 12 year old boy about Judaism, as his introduction to the whole thing? The very first thing?

Do you teach him Shma, do you talk about Gd and monotheism?
Do you teach him תורה צוה לנו משה, that HaShem gave us a Torah of ritual mitzvos and social mitzvos, which is the anchor of everything Jewish?
Do you teach him about Divine reward and punishment, Gan Eden (heaven) and Gehennom (hell) and what we believe about theodicy, about bad things happening to good people?

Do you teach him about Jewish history, our ancestors and the kings and the Beis haMikdash and the exiles?
Do you teach him how to live daily life as a Jew – kashrut, Shabbat, holidays?
Do you teach him how to daven?
The possibilities are endless; ארוכה מארץ מדה ורחבה מני ים (its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea)!

I settled on Motivation as the first focus.

For a 12 year old boy raised without any exposure to Judaism and then suddenly thrust into Bar Mitzvah training, the biggest question must be WHY – why do my parents think this is important to me? Why, when I am on the verge of adulthood, when I could be out playing basketball or listening to music or playing with my Nintendo or just relaxing, when I have all of these school pressures and social pressures, do I have to spend 45 minutes a week with a rabbi? We’ve never cared about this before!

So I thought he needed to learn Motivation – why any of this matters, to him.

And so I started not with any of the above, but with a list of 20th and 21st century Jewish accomplishments. You know, like those chain emails that go around about Jews who invented the cell phone and got Nobel prizes, et cetera. Broader than that, though – I included survival in the Holocaust as well as the founding of a country and its defense against numerous invasions. I included the ways in which modern legal systems trace themselvs to the Torah’s laws. I included pioneering Jewish leaders from many different areas of thought and life.

And I asked him, “Did you ever know you were a part of this? Do you want to know where all of this originates, what binds it all together, what all of the people I’ve mentioned have in common?”

And then we were ready to get started.

I’ll tell you this – it worked so well that this is now the first thing I do with all Bar Mitzvah kids, including the ones trained in Yeshiva.

What would you have done? What’s the first thing you would teach a Jew about Judaism?

Completing the Daf Yomi cycle - what it means to me

Tomorrow, I expect to complete my first “cycle” of teaching the Daf Yomi here in Allentown. I started teaching the second chapter of Kiddushin in the early summer of 2001, shortly after arriving here, and we are slated to begin that chapter again tomorrow.

I would not have expected it, but this is a very exciting moment for me.

It’s not the issue of completing another round of shas; I know quite well that there is no such thing, at least for a human intellect like mine, as completing shas. Besides, I have had substitutes for 100-150 of the daf along the way, so this can’t really count as a completion.

Part of it, I suppose, is that learning by teaching is so much deeper than learning personally. Certainly, I understand the gemara much better now, for having had to explain it.

And part of it is the simple fact that I showed up every day for so long, consecutively, to do this.

But what really moves me is the group, the Daffies, my guys. (And women, of course; we have a couple of women who attend daily as well. But they’re all “my guys” to me.) Learning Torah with anyone creates a unique link, learning Gemara moreso, and learning daily much more. (Frankly, this makes me somewhat uncomfortable with the co-ed aspect of it, but that’s a topic for another post.)

And through that link, I can see growth.

I always have mixed feelings about encouraging people to attend classes. In my student days, I learned much more through chavruta (partner) study than through shiurim (classes); I emerged from personal study with rich understanding, but I usually emerged from shiurim with a set of notes. So it’s hard for me to encourage people to come to classes; I tend to push private study more.

But Daf Yomi is different. Here, through the day after day after day, I actually see the change in people. I’m not talking about a change in religiosity, or a change in knowledge; I’m talking about a change in their approach to gemara, a maturity and sophistication so that when people say gemara or talmud, my Daffies comprehend what those words mean. It’s not about the words or the pages or the volumes, it’s about the system as a whole. My crew may not get every shiur, we may not understand every page, but we emerge with a greater respect for the analytic methods, for the commitment, for the expertise, of the sages who compiled the gemara.

And that’s what moves me, on the eve of completing the cycle and beginning again. It’s the knowledge that I am playing a role in helping Jews come to a real appreciation for this essential part of our heritage, this mass of knowledge and thought and hope and analysis which is lengthier than the land and broader than the sea.

Their appreciation for our heritage, their grasp of the spectrum of Jewish intellectual tradition, their comprehension of what it means to be heir to Judaism’s great repository of wisdom – this is their reward for participating in the Daf, and it is my reward as well.