Can you feel that? I sure can. They’re almost here. Just a few, short days left, and they’ll be upon us. The sound of the shofar is getting louder and louder… That’s right; it’s the High Holiday season! For rabbis and Jewish communities everywhere, this is the most important time of the year. In my opinion, we stress out so much and feel all this anxiety… because we want people to care about their Judaism. We want this all to matter. With that in mind, one question keeps popping back into my head as I read this week’s parashah: how do we get people to buy in? How can you facilitate someone's Jewish journey, creating a positive and meaningful, fun yet educational, spiritual and historic, modern yet traditional, specific but not exclusionary, amazing Jewish experience??? Piece of cake, right? That may be the goal, we're just not always sure how to get there. Sometimes we think we know. We know the approach we're going to take, and we know the SWBAT's (Students Will Be Able To. Thank you, MA in Jewish Education...) that we want to achieve, but there are no guarantees. It's frustrating. BUT, it's also nice to know that God and Moses struggled with the very same issues.
Our Torah reading highlights different approaches that Moses and God took in order to get the Israelites to subscribe to The New Exodus Agenda (my title). The people are at the border of the Promised Land. The goal is “simple”: Get in there, sweep away idolatry, create a country with new cities and towns, build a Temple, and establish a new religion, culture, and society. Yikes! Understandably, you need people to subscribe to your philosophy, and get really excited about it, or this enterprise is going to be awfully short-lived... Many years ago, I read a wonderful Torah commentary by Shira Epstein, a professor in Jewish Education (and former teacher of mine) at JTS, the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York. Dr. Epstein points out different "modalities," ways to educate, that are used in our parashah. Moses goes back and forth between praising, admonishing, teaching, preaching, and encouraging the people to feel connected. They are given "activities" and assignments to strengthen their connection to God and the land, and they are chastised for bad behavior they may be tempted to engage in sometime in the future. Dr. Epstein writes, "each of the activities Moshe describes is what educators might view as a 'scaffold' to help the people ultimately feel invested in both venerating their lineage and their land, and thus, preserving the laws that guide their everyday communal practices."
Our biggest problem with this Torah portion, however, is the lengthy list of curses, known as the Tochecha, or Rebuke, that Moses launches against the people. What kind of an educational model is that, yelling and (literally) cursing at them?!? However, as any parent or teacher will tell you, there's the ideal model... and there's reality. Like stubborn and insolent children, the Israelites only occasionally respond to reward and encouragement; sometimes they also need reprimands and a timeout in the corner. Just like with parenting, we often have comments and "helpful" suggestions for *other* parents; we just never want that well-intentioned advice ourselves! It's easy for us to judge how Moses handles the Israelites, and to point out the flaws in his leadership style. As we get closer and closer to the High Holidays, let's not forget to look back at ourselves, and the relationships we've created with our own children, students, and peers. Or even parents, teachers, and colleagues. Imagine for a minute how hard it would be if you yourself were in Moses' sandals!
Instead, let's put aside the judgment, yet hold onto the underlying lesson: How do you create buy-in? What gets someone excited and enthusiastic, and how do you empower him or her to take ownership? These were the questions facing Moses and God, and they continue to challenge us to this day. Wrestling with this challenge does remind us we're still on the journey, and we're still engaging with Judaism and caring about the next generation. And that truly is half the battle right there.
Shabbat Shalom!
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