The Challenges & Opportunities for the Next Generation of Jewish Education
Excerpted from Yossi Prager’s address to the 2011 graduates of the Azrieli School for Jewish Education.
Graduation speakers are generally charged with inspiring graduates to ambitions larger than themselves. Today, I have no need to do that. You have already made a commitment to the most important profession in the Jewish community today. In my eyes, you are all 21st Century heroes. As a parent, yeshiva board member and AVI CHAI director, I want to thank you for investing yourselves in our most precious resource: our children.
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The Haberdasher’s school in England, which was founded in the 16th century, has a crest, which reads: Serve and Obey. The Jewish version of that crest: tzav et bnei yisrael v’amarta aleihem
Neither version resonates easily with young people today. We live at a time and in a modern world in which the primacy of autonomy, choice, and the search for meaning has infiltrated Orthodox communities as well. Students have always asked why – and why shouldn’t they; but today’s students need a more comprehensive answer – not just why should I put on Tefillin, but why should Judaism and Halacha be the central focus of my life.
Most of what you have learned thus far has been about the What and How of Jewish education, the content you will teach and the pedagogy you will employ. However, given where students are today, the most important question for you to answer is “Why”? Why have you made Yahadut and Jewish education central to your lives? What deeper values does Judaism offer you and your community that will compel students to care about the What and How of Judaism in their lives? In this context, I want to quote from a paper written by Rabbi Shalom Carmy for the Orthodox Forum this past March:
A religious life never forgets that as we are now is not the only way to be. Traditional religion, and Judaism especially, is countercultural; it can only flourish by forging an alternative to the culture around us. Freedom is freedom to stand apart from the tyranny of the present [secular] consensus; it is the freedom to transform ourselves into something faithful yet new, disciplined yet unprecedented; it is the freedom to realize the mysterious destiny that constitutes our dialogue with God. And so, we study history and know that the mores and forms of early 21st century Western culture are not the only way to live. We study literature and realize that there are modes of feeling and perception unimagined by the culture in which we find ourselves. We learn to philosophize because we are not condemned to think exactly like the majority of our culture. The more we can creatively mobilize the sweep and scope of human experience in all its forms…the better situated we are to blaze a path worthy of our own transcendent destiny and worthy of the emulation and admiration of others.
I share this quotation with you because I found in it an articulation of my “Why.” Judaism frees us to imagine our lives and destiny differently than the surrounding consensus. Your “why” may be different. But it is your ability to articulate, and even more importantly, embody and enact your “why” that will inspire your students to follow in your path and give you half-a-chance to meet the extraordinary demands of being a teacher.
For more on The Challenges & Opportunities for the Next Generation of Jewish Education see Tuesday’s blog post.