Advice, mine and others'

An online magazine, EdJewTopia, asked Jewish educators for eight pieces of advice on Jewish education. Here's what I said:

1. Israel education isn’t a magic bullet. While visiting Israel has a powerful effect on anyone who feels even the slightest bit Jewish, studying Israel in class is only meaningful if the student already feels Jewish. Otherwise it’s just social studies.
2. Learning prayers doesn’t make a person religious. The experience of praying, and of attending religious services, is different from that of studying prayers.
3. Time on task matters. Less class time = less learning. Also, less attendance = less learning.
4. It takes commitment. Modeling mature Jewish belief is more important than transmitting information.
5. Students need multiple role models. On the other hand, a teacher, principal, or rabbi is automatically in a different category from anything that most students imagine for themselves.
6. Parents have more influence than do teachers. Family support for students’ education—in the form of living Jewishly—is essential.
7. It takes a village. Well, a Jewish community. Learning to be part of the Jewish community is an essential goal of Jewish education. The school, the family, and the whole community need to work together.
8. You’re still Jewish after the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony. Teaching only what is needed for the Mitzvah Event is a recipe for disaster. Jewish learning is a lifelong process.

Read the rest of the submissions here.

The Tebow Effect

One subject seemed to dominate the religion news this fall: Denver quarterback Tim Tebow’s overt religiosity. Many conservative Christians admire and imitate it, while it makes some others—including liberal Christians, Jews, and Muslims—uncomfortable.

In any case, it’s hard to miss. In addition to kneeling on the field, Tebow habitually refers to God, and specifically to Jesus Christ. At the end of every game, he says, “First I would like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

There has been, however, very little criticism of Tebow from Jewish, Muslim, or mainstream secular quarters. It’s not because we’d be afraid to speak our minds: there are other reasons.

First, we all know that football, however public its appeal, is a private enterprise, not the government. (Stadium construction sometimes receives support from local or state government, but the teams don’t.) Football is a business, and businesses are free to endorse religion, tolerate it, or oppose it, in accord with their owners’ beliefs and their conclusions about what is good or bad for business overall.

Second, Tim Tebow is, by all accounts, exceptionally decent and likable. The Muslim author Ibrahim Abdul-Matin writes:

Tebow is unique because he is both an underdog and a winner. He is both humble and non-judgmental—a dynamite combination for any human being. Finally, his fellow teammates love him, he does not drink, smoke or do drugs, he is celibate, unmarried, and he has a winning smile and personality.

Hardly anyone claims that Tebow, the son of Baptist missionaries, is trying to force his religion on others. There’s wide consensus that he’s merely expressing his own belief—something that everyone has the right to do.

This hasn’t stopped news media from trying to stir up controversy. Fox News attempted to connect it to their annual complaints about the so-called war on Christmas, claiming that those who questioned his public displays of religion were waging war on Christians.

The Wall Street Journal asked representatives of various religions about Tebow, specifically whether they might preach about him. Rabbi Joe Black, of Temple Emanuel in Denver, replied,

Tim Tebow is broadcasting the fact that he believes in God. God is actively involved in his life. We call ourselves people of faith. Is that how we perceive God? And if not, how do we perceive God?

At Temple Sinai in Denver, Rabbi Rick Rheins, a Colts and Bengals fan, said that he might preach about Tebow if the Broncos made it into the playoffs.

The chairman of the Colorado Muslim society, Khaled Hamideh, said,

I know I’m a Muslim and he’s a Christian, but I admire somebody who thanks God for everything that He gave him. The team has rallied around him not because of his religious beliefs but because they believe this guy has something in him that pushes him the right way.

Almost all American Jews over the age of 50 know the Lord’s Prayer—a Christian text, although it expresses Jewish theology—from memory, because we were made to recite it every day in public school until 1962. Abdul-Matin, observing that football tends to be a very Christian sport, says that he knows it, too, but because he played football, and teams at all levels pray it in the locker room.

That’s the only part of this that is a genuine issue for us. Pro football can do whatever it wants, but I’d be concerned if Jewish players were, or felt, marginalized in public-school sports because they chose not to participate in non-Jewish prayer.

My love-hate relationship with Sukkot

The author of the Kosher on a Budget blog wrote last Wednesday, "Much as I love Sukkot, I would be lying if I said that I wished another three-day yomtov was starting tonight."

I love Sukkot, too. And I live in a climate where it's hard to love Sukkot, because the weather is consistently lousy. This year it rained almost all the time, and it's usually quite cold during Sukkot. On the other hand, a rabbi from Winnipeg once told me about how they sat in the sukkah in their parkas. It's not as cold as that.

Most of my community doesn't love Sukkot. I can count the number of sukkot built at homes on my fingers. When I invite guests to mine, I keep a stack of jackets and sweatshirts handy, because most of the guests, no matter how clearly I tell them, don't really believe that we're going to sit outdoors for at least a couple of hours.

I'd say that people see the sukkah at the shul as more symbolic than functional.It's hexagonal, and no matter how much you think that this makes it like a Star of David, that's not as functional as rectangular for a sit-down meal. Sit-down meals don't figure in the congregation's plan; the shul sukkah is used for about 10 minutes for a kiddush after the morning services on the yom tov days and the chol ha-moed Shabbat, and that's it. This year I hosted a lunch meeting--of an interfaith group--in the sukkah at the shul, and that was the only time anyone sat down in it for any longer than the time needed to say leyshev ba-sukkah.

I started building a sukkah at home when I lived in a region where the weather, although tending to be just as rainy as here, was considerably warmer at this time of year. It's more attractive to build and use a sukkah where you expect better weather.

I've also lived in Los Angeles, where I worked for a shul whose sukkah would seat 100 people for lunch. I was about to say that people who have lived in Israel for any length of time are more likely to build a home sukkah, but in my current community, that's not true at all.