AT EACH MEETING OF THE MIDRASHA BOARD OF DIRECTORS, A BOARD MEMBER PRESENTS A D'VAR TORAH, A COMMENTARY ON THE TORAH PORTION, WHICH TIES IN THE WEEKLY THEME TO MIDRASHA. EXAMPLES ARE BELOW WITH THE NEWEST ONES AT THE TOP.
Tazria/ Metzora
Anna Martin
April 14, 2010
I have decided that as the faculty member elect of the Board of Directors, I will use this opportunity to show how a really dense, unwieldy, and seemingly meaningless portion of Torah can be a window into why Midrasha works.
Let me acquaint you with the kind of stuff I was working with after I unwittingly volunteered to give this d’var Torah—Thanks Yossi:
29. If a man or a woman has a lesion on the head or on the beard [area], 30. the kohen shall look at the lesion, and, behold! its appearance is deeper than the skin, and in it is a thin golden yellow hair, the kohen shall pronounce him unclean. It is a nethek, which is tzara'ath of the head or the beard. 31. But when the kohen looks at the nethek lesion, and, behold! its appearance is not deeper than the skin, and there is no black hair in it, the kohen shall quarantine [the person with] the nethek lesion for seven days. (Lev.13.29-31)
Huh? The whole first two sections were about looking at different colors of hair in different colors of lesions. If I was confused and a little grossed out, you can bet my students would be too.
The Parshah of Tazria and Metzora is all about the laws of ritual impurity and purity (tumah v’taharah). This is where we learn about impure discharges and a supra-natural plague, tzaraat, often translated as leprosy, which can afflict people, garments, and homes. Each of these states of impurity according to the Parshah requires the impure one to go through a period of isolation from the community, consultation with the Kohen, and then to ritually purify oneself with sacrificial offerings.
As we are no longer living in the time of the Temple, many of these laws and rules seem outdated or impractical (for example, being cleaned by a priest with a mixture of birds’ blood and herbs or slaughtering three different types of sheep after waving them around). How, I wondered, does this portion relate to me or my students at Midrasha? If I wanted to use it with my 9th grade, Etgarnikim, what would draw them in?
In fact, what I learned after reading some commentary from Rashi, was that this state of supra-natural plague, tzaraat was actually believed to be brought about by spreading gossip, lashon hara, and by believing oneself superior to the rest of the community (hence why the priest brought cedar wood, the tallest, most superior tree to help cleanse you during your period of isolation). Aha—gossip, teens love to do that, right? This must be my “in” to making the parshah meaningful to me and to them. Unfortunately, they learned about lashon hara in their pre-b’nai mitzvah studies and again in 8th grade during Gesharim, so now its old hat and our discussion will probably fizzle in five seconds if I don’t come up with something else…
So, I went online and read up on how other people interpreted this portion and delved back in and found this:
Lev. 13.46: All the days the lesion is upon him, he shall remain unclean. He is unclean; he shall dwell isolated; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
Hmm, now this is interesting: for spreading gossip, building walls of mistrust in the community, and believing oneself superior to others, the punishment was to be isolated from the community (generally for seven days). What would my students think of this? Is it a punishment that fits the crime? Could we apply it to today, though perhaps not in a literal sense? And how many of my students are in communities in high school, with friends and acquaintances, perhaps even in their own families, where they are building or are living within walls of mistrust? My 9th graders would be the first to tell you about all the gossip and backbiting and the sense of isolation that their early teenage years is causing them. Some of it comes from without and much from within. And this is where I see Midrasha coming in.
Whereas the other six days of the week, at any time in the year, many of our students are feeling isolated and alone, suffering from peer pressure, family pressures, and self-imposed pressures, on the seventh day, they come to Midrasha for a sort of community cleansing and building. One of the commentators that I read, asked the following:
Are you wise? Who learns from you if you are alone?
Are you articulate and persuasive? Whom do you persuade if you are alone?
Are you a leader? Whom do you lead if you are alone?
Are you an artist? Who will be inspired by your vision if you are alone?
These questions were very poignant for me and I think they would be so too for my students. Our Etgar class is constantly talking about the conditions of community and the importance of nurturing both oneself and those with whom you are in community.
In many ways, I think the condition of being a teenager is the condition of feeling that one is tzaraat—afflicted by some supranatural plague that no one else, especially not your parents and often not your friends or schoolmates can understand. And what’s beautiful about Midrasha is it offers a space outside those other communities to learn from and teach others, to persuade and be persuaded, to lead and be led, to inspire and be inspired. With the ultimate goal of leaving behind the condition of tzaraat (in this case, the teenage state) able to be fully participant in community and to see the value of connecting in rather than isolating out.
And where does that leave me, the teacher of these students? I like to think that it puts me under the obligation of the kohen or the priest, who had to go outside the camp and meet the tzaraat where she or he was at and provide consultation, counseling, and support in being able to join or re-join the community. Which, when I think about it, probably is pretty good job description, if Diane was to make one.
So to conclude, I hope this offers a bit of evidence that even a piece of Torah such as this one speaks to why Midrasha works and may even be a way in which a ritual meant for a time when there was a Temple can work and still be relevant when the physical structure ceases to exist and all that is left is the community.
Mishpatim
February 10, 2010
Alex Kennedy
-6th reading in Exodus
-“Mishpatim”- Hebrew for “laws”
-God tells Moses to give the people a set of laws (response to making the gold cow?)
• 23 positive, 33 negative commandments in the parshah
• some don't seem entirely applicable in our quotidian lives
o “Not to withhold food, clothing, or sexual relations from one's wife”
o “The courts must execute by strangulation those who deserve it.”
o “The court must not let the sorcerer live.”
• Others touch on salient modern issues
o “Not to strike one's father or mother”
o “Not to insult or harm a sincere convert with words”
o “To lend to the poor and destitute”
• interpretation is one of my favorite aspects of Judaism
• review and elucidation makes discussion of ancient text lively and engaging some 3,000 years later
• provides rich content for Midrasha classes
• dialogues in Midrasha not only inform students about Jewish law and tradition, but also encourage students to grapple with these laws in terms of current affairs and their everyday lives.
• Similar function of midrasha and mishpatim: help instill a moral compass that guides our action, especially at such a critical/formative time
Chanukah – Hillel and Shamai on Lighting the Candles
A review of two articles about the differing opinions of the two sages
December 9, 2009
Jeff Felson
In two days we will light the candles of Chanukah. The accepted method of performance of this mitzvah is that we light one candle on the first night, then two candles on the second night and so on – increasing by one candle on each of the eight nights. On the final night of Chanukah, we light all eight candles.
It is significant that in this procedure there was a “machloket”, or disagreement between Hillel and Shamai. For this discussion I gathered material from an article “Two Opinions on the Lighting of the Menorah” by Rabbi Pinchas Frankel as well as “Chanukah, and the Academies of Hillel and Shamai” by S.M.Samuels
The Talmud in Tractate Shabbat relates that the academy of Hillel advocates lighting the candles as we know today, in ascending order. The academy of Shamai disagreed and argued that we light the Chanukah candles starting with eight candles on the first night, then seven candles on the second night. This method continues in descending order, so each night has one less candle than the preceding night.
“Each viewpoint has either a model from the Torah or a logical argument to support their opinion.” Beit Hillel applies “a general rule that is followed in many areas of Torah: “One increases in matters of holiness, and does not diminish” “Maalin Ba’Kodesh ve’ayn Moridin.” “In this manner we are reminded that the successive lighting of the candles represents increasing our Kedusha and increasing in all things that deal with Kedusha or holiness.”
On the other hand, Beit Shamai, supports the lighting of the candles in decreasing numbers. They refer to the example in the Torah of counting in an unequal manner. Shamai refers to the bullocks that were brought to the Temple during the festival of Sukkoth. “On Sukkoth on the first day, thirteen bullocks were offered as sacrifices, on the second day twelve were offered and on the third day eleven and so forth for seven days On each succeeding day the number of sacrifices decreased by one ”. Similarly, the candles are to decrease by one each night of Chanukah.
So now we have clarified the positions of Hillel and Shamai. Not necessarily. After all we can ask Beit Shammai: “What do the bullocks offered on Sukkoth have to do with the miracle of Hanukkah ?” – perhaps they don’t. So it’s clear – we light in increasing order. “Conversely, we can ask Beit Hillel “was not the miracle greatest on the first day, and subsequent nights were just an extension of the first original miracle of the oil? If so, then the beginning is the most important and not the increase until the end .” So, it’s clear – we light in decreasing order. Not exactly…the discussion can go back and forth.
Light is often compared to understanding or wisdom. The teens at Midrasha may have many discussions and arguments. The important point is that with each Sunday or with each retreat there is more understanding, wisdom, and light. There are many paths to that understanding and knowledge. Just as it is important for Hillel and Shamai to have the discussion; it is important for the students at Midrasha to have the discussions. In the final analysis, they are still lighting the candles in one way or the other.
May this be a Hanukah at Midrasha that is filled with much knowledge and discussion and light. Chag Hanukah Sameach.
Bereshit and Man’s Creativity
October 14, 2009
Stacey Shulman
Bereshit, and the story of the world, begins with the extremely elegant creation of order out of chaos. But by the time Adam and Eve leave the garden and head out into the wilderness—order dissolves. It then takes the rest of the Torah to come back to the promise of some kind of order and resolution, and it’s going to be a long trip. Our story then becomes all about the journey. How we mature individually parallels these stories of how we mature as a people. But at its core, in the beginning, Bereshit tells us that the root of our identity is as creative beings, and that each one of us has to transcend our own private journey through the wilderness. It’s the teachings of Torah that help guide us individually, and as a community, to come out of the wilderness in an ordered, meaningful existence. But the wilderness, where the line between man and beast is thin, and that between survival and death even thinner, inspires, and teaches, and it is a blessing.
Three major sections define Bereshit: the creation of the world and the garden; the expulsion from the garden and the story of Cain and Abel; and the Chronicles of Adam, the generations leading to Noach. I’d like to talk about creativity, what it means to be in G-d’s image, and the seeming dichotomy between order and chaos.
There is nothing that tells us how G-d comes into being; just that G-d is. Bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim v’et haaretz; G-d created heaven and earth. Our first introduction to G-d is as a creator. It is the act of creating that defines Elohim. G-d says Y’hi or, vay’hi or; there shall be light and there was light. Vayar Elohim, et ha’or, kee tov; and G-d saw that the light was good. So within the first few lines we learn that there is a connection between creation and joy. By dividing the light and darkness, G-d, in effect, creates time, a predictable cycle of day and night. It’s noteworthy that light is created well before the sun, which doesn’t come about until the fourth day. What we revere is the creative force that brings us light—not the sun, as in a sun deity, common at the time Bereshith was written.
But we are co-creators in this world. The creation of the world can’t be complete without man’s help. The common notion at the time was that the rulers were G-d-like, but certainly not the masses. What we will later come to describe as a very democratic idea has its seeds right here. We all have a say. We are all created in G-d’s image, no one has better, or more direct access to G-d, than another. And we honor G-d not by building a temple where the deity can live, but by honoring his creation on the 7th day. Later we’ll be commanded to keep Shabbat, not to work, to set aside time, to sanctify time, which G-d created on the very first day. These ideas were radical. Bereshit gives us a purposeful G-d who creates man gently, lovingly, because G-d wants a creature in his image; that is, one who creates.
But things begin to get out of hand in our story, precisely because we are creators. We are full of wonder, and awe, and questions—this is what distinguishes us from the other creatures of the earth. What happens if I do splash paint on this canvas? What happens if I do mix these two chemicals together? . . .What happens if I do eat this piece of fruit?. . . A couple of weeks ago we talked about the concept of free will in Netzavim—choose life, so you and your children shall live. But it’s not a commandment. We are given the choice. Eve makes the first choice. Even though we have commandments, we still have choices. If we were created in G-d’s image, it is G-d who puts the questions in us; we were created to wonder. Even though Adam and Eve were given the commandment not to eat it, Eve had to wonder—it’s in the definition of whom she was created to be. She thinks about it, she discusses it, she weighs the potential consequences, and then she makes the choice. She eats the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, because they go together—good and evil. You can’t know one without the other. And the moment she makes that choice, she commits all of humanity with the responsibility of figuring out which is which. It is choice that shapes our future. If we live in indecision, or never make active choices, nothing ever happens, we go nowhere, the world doesn’t evolve into a better place. If we make bad choices, we have to learn to live with the consequences. But even if we do, G-d doesn’t abandon us. Elohim loves us, still, first shown to us when he fashions some sturdier clothing for Adam and Eve as they leave the garden. (Wait! Take a warmer coat!) So after Eve makes her choice, and now knows good and evil, the rest of the Torah follows as a response, as G-d gives us all the tools we need to create an ethical road-map that will show us how to create good in the world, because that was, after all, the original intent.
G-d creates all this out of nothingness. What is that? What is nothingness? Is it a black hole? Or is nothingness an indefinable space where all possibility exists? The first few lines of Bereshit describe an artist in the midst of exploration. The use of the word rakia is interesting to note. It is the structure that separates heaven and sky, translated as firmament by King James, vault by Robert Alter, and dome by Everett Fox, with the note that the literal translation of rakia is a beaten sheet of metal. G-d is literally fashioning the dome of the heavens as a metal worker crafts a shining, shimmering item of function and beauty from a plain piece of metal. It’s an empty canvas, and Elohim is like a painter, painting these broad strokes: Light. And G-d steps back and says—that’s good. The next day, I’ll add some sky. Steps back—OK that’s enough for today. And She keeps adding and adding, more and more, getting more and more excited, and creates this perfect little world, this perfect little garden. But like any artistic creation—you can start out with an idea, but it rarely ends up that way, because the work itself begins to take on a life of its own. This is true of pottery, painting, acting, dance, science, all of it. It’s the nature of creation. In the midst of its formation, it begins to morph a little bit out of control—Eve eats the fruit, then Adam eats it, and then they can’t stay in the garden anymore. G-d gets angry, and then you have some very angry strokes of paint on the tableau. But they are honest expressions of feeling, no less legitimate or beautiful, just not completely in line with the original intent. Things continue to spin out of control, so that by the time we get to Noach, G-d is totally ready to throw in the towel, and just wash the whole painting away. ‘This is NOT what I was trying to do here, and I’m just going to start over.’ But He can’t quite do it, not completely, because in truth, He loves his creation, and He models for us one of the most important lessons—that is that there is no limit to the times we can begin again. We celebrate beginnings over and over again with the recitation of the Shehechianu. Starting over again is actually a common technique that actors employ. When lost, take a breath, and start over. On stage, it never fails, because it’s a true moment, and people can always register the truth.
I’d like to offer that one of the major ways we are created in G-d’s image, is as creators ourselves. Jews know a lot about it. We are a people of the wilderness. This is where we find our possibility. It’s all about negotiating the chaos. It’s about not being afraid to be in the chaos, not being afraid to be in the wilderness. Creativity takes comfort in formlessness, because there’s a very counter-intuitive secret to it all. It’s about discipline. It is in the discipline that we find safety and comfort in the wilderness. Discipline breeds freedom. 10 hours a week at the ballet barre is the only way to ever gain the physical, muscular control that allows your body the flexibility to go beyond technique, beyond thinking, to a place that we have trouble defining, but that when we see it, we know is art. It’s about doing things hundreds and hundreds of times to allow the space for real intuition, real genius to strike. Albert Einstein said, “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.” Out of 76 composers identified in Harold Schonberg’s Lives of the Great Composers only three produced a masterwork with less than 10 years of preparation, and that was independent of age at the start. Volume is very, very important. And it is in the repetition of ritual, for thousands of years now, that we as Jews find our identity—because the system is set up that way, to lead us into that space of inspiration and creativity. What can often seem like the most boring repetition of our Shabbat service and sequence of prayers is designed to lead us deeper and deeper into a meditative state, back to this formless place. After all these prayers, and after two amidot, only then do we open and read Torah, in a place where insight can reveal itself to us, where we can connect pieces of input into meaningful patterns, where our minds are open to receiving and recognizing universal truths. Shabbat is the place where we sanctify time and space to open ourselves to these intangibles—to stretch our imaginations and create what could be in the world. Shabbat is our practice.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Me-high CHICK-sent-me-high-ee), a professor of psychology at University of Chicago who studies creativity and creative people, describes the notion of flow in creativity—a flow state where people are fully absorbed in activity for its own sake, where the ego falls away, they lose their sense of time, and have feelings of great satisfaction, which to me sounds strikingly similar to the first two chapters of Bereshit. It’s not really order out of chaos, but more like the natural order that exists within chaos.
I close by highlighting the obvious correlation to Midrasha, our safe harbor for our adolescent children as they negotiate their entry into the wilderness of life. We seek to give them a broad education in hopes that they will create for themselves ideas that go beyond what they learn from books and the classroom. Along with confidence, the single best gift we can give them as begin their journey as young adults is the satisfaction of creating meaning in their lives and the lives of those they love. Kee tov. It’s good. I wish you all a Shana Tovah and a year filled with wonder, curiosity, and creative fulfillment.
Parsha Va-era 5770
1/13/2010
Robin Keller
The second book of the Bible Sh’mot or Exodus is the story of a people encountering their journey from slavery to freedom. To give some context, last week the parsha was about a new king coming to the throne in Egypt. He oppresses and enslaves the Israelites out of fear that their growing number might prove to be a threat. When this does not succeed, he orders all new-born Israelite boys killed. The infant Moses, survives, and when his mother can no longer keep him hidden, she leaves him in a basket floating on the Nile. He is found by the daughter of Pharaoh, who adopts him and hires his mother as a wet-nurse. The text jumps to Moses, as a man, seeing a taskmaster beating an Israelite slave. Moses kills the Egyptian and then must flee. He runs to Midian, where he is welcomed by a Midianite priest and is given his daughter Zipporah as a wife. She gives birth to a son. While tending his new father-in-law's flocks, Moses is called by God from the burning bush. God instructs Moses to return to Egypt to free the Israelites from slavery. Moses returns and is reunited with his Brother Aaron. Together they go and pay their first visit to Pharaoh. But Pharaoh dismisses Moses and his God, and increases the workload of the slaves.
When God approached Moses to tell him he should go before Pharaoh to ask that the Egyptian ruler allow the Israelites to depart, Moses responds by saying the Pharaoh will not listen. Because of his speech problem, Moses does not feel he is the right person to represent the Jewish people. God answers by declaring that Moses’ brother, Aaron, will accompany him as spokesman. The two brothers appear before Pharaoh to request the freedom of their people, but Pharaoh refuses to liberate them. As a consequence, terrible plagues are set upon Egypt.
Why does God choose Moses to be the leader of the Israelites, knowing he has difficulty speaking? Does God plan from the outset for this confrontation with Pharoah to be accomplished as a team? Why would God choose an 80 year old Moses and an 83 year old Aaron, his brother, to risk their lives?
We are well aware of the power of people working together for the greater good. Is there some way in which God was underscoring that people not be judged negatively for their imperfections? Was this God’s way of showing that all people, including those with disabilities are capable of doing great things? God would not take ‘no’ for an answer from Moses when he objected to being chosen as the leader. God proposed a plan of acting as a team with his brother. God encouraged the two brothers, Moses and Aaron to work together to attempt the overwhelming task of opposing Pharoah.
Midrasha was created many years ago and clearly it has thrived by having a strong leader, our wonderful Diane Bernbaum. It has been strengthened over the years by a strong board president and currently by the hard work of Yossi Fendel. The team that we have formed as the Midrasha board of directors has provided the hard work, devotion and ingenuity to continue to reinvent the future of our teen’s Jewish community high school, Midrasha.
Rosh HaShanna
Carolyn Pines
September 16, 2009
In just three days we’ll be leaving behind the month of Elul and entering the month of Tishrei – moving from the Jewish year 5769 to 5770. The shofar has sounded across the Jewish world every day this entire past month (except on Shabbat) – blasting out the news – kind of like Tony in West Side Story when he sings out “Could it be? Yes it could! Something’s coming, something good, if I can wait! Something’s coming, I don’t know what it is, but it is gonna’ be great!” Rosh Hashanah – the “head” of the year and a new beginning.
But is Rosh Hashanah really the beginning of the New Year? Exodus Chapter 18, Verse 2 tells us that God spoke to Moses and Aaron and told them that the month of Nisan, which is the month in which Pesach occurs in spring, “shall be the head of months -- the first of the months of the year.” But that would make Tishrei the seventh month of the year. How can this be when for 2000 years Jews have celebrated Tishrei as the Rosh Hashanah, the “head” of the year. Is it possible that we Jews can’t get enough of a good thing and so we celebrate two Jewish New Years?
Arthur Waskow in his amazing book, Seasons of Our Joy, thinks that maybe we really do have – and need – both “first months” of the year. Pesach in the month of Nisan commemorates the beginning of freedom – the liberation of our bodies from slavery. Seven months later – the number seven makes of think of Shabbat’s falling on the seventh day of the week, a day of rest when we renew our whole selves for the week ahead – seven months later on Rosh Hashanah in the month of Tishrei, we renew ourselves by turning (teshuvah) towards God. During the month of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah, we study Torah, we prepare ourselves spiritually, we become more self-aware and introspective, and we rethink our lives. We literally raise our head -- our rosh -- towards Heaven. At Pesach, our body is liberated. At Rosh Hashanah, our head is steeped in renewing our learning. Both beginnings – freedom of the body in Nisan and enlightenment of the mind at Tishrei – are essential to completing the Jewish experience. So that’s why it’s okay to have two new beginnings of the year.
The particular New Year that’s coming up happens to coincide with the beginning of the new Midrasha year. What an amazing coincidence! Our children, heralded by the parental shofar blasting, “It’s Sunday! Morning! For G-d’s sake! Get out! Of bed! Go go go go go go go go go!” …our children steep themselves in renewed study, turning, we hope, towards the Source of Life and the Source of Learning, both spiritual and intellectual. The High Holiday machzor quotes Deuteronomy Chapter 30, verses 15-19 when God gives us a significant choice, saying, “See – I have placed before you this day life and good, and death and evil. [Read my lips.] I have placed life and death, blessing and cursing, before you. [This is a no brainer.] THEREFORE choose life…that both you and those who come after you may live.”
Basically God tells us that if we love God (meaning “turn to God” -- teshuvah -- as we are reminded to do on Rosh Hashanah) and keep the mitzvoth and laws (meaning constantly reflect on what’s right and good, study, learn from our mistakes, go forth and teach) then we’ll be blessed. We’ll be blessed with life – which I think means “life, light, love, learning” every moment we are alive.
On the other hand, if we throw it all away – worship other gods, behave with evil in our hearts – we’ll pretty much be cursed…and even though we’ll obviously live out our lifetime in the technical sense, our lives will be like living death – which doesn’t apply to any of us here because we choose life by being on the Midrasha board…by striving to keep alive for our children the tradition of education and self-reflection of which we are reminded at Rosh Hashanah. THEREFORE choose life – that both you and those who come after you may live. THEREFORE choose – and we do -- Midrasha.
Parshat D’varim
July 22, 2009
Rivka Greenberg
D’varim the parshat ha shaouvah has a number of significant pieces
• It is the opening of the fifth book of the Torah, D’varim
• It is read the Shabbat before tisha b’av, after which begins the seven Shabbatot of consolation leading up to Rosh Hashanah
• It contains the beginning of Moshe’s farewells, as he is standing on land away from the promised land
After reading the parasha and a number of different drashot, I will continue what I see as a minhag the this board, using d’var Torah to connect TO our Midrasha work
• I saw 5 connections between this parasha and Midrasha
• As it is written, and in words coming from Moshe ‘Thereupon I said to you, "I cannot bear the burden of you by myself. 10 The Lord your God has multiplied you until you are today as numerous as the stars in the sky. — 11 May the Lord, the God of our ancestors, increase your numbers a thousandfold, and bless you as Ha’shem has promised you.”
• “Pick from each of your tribes people who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads." 14 You answered me and said, "What you propose to do is good." 15 So I took your tribal leaders, wise and experienced people, and appointed them heads over you……. 16 I charged your magistrates at that time as follows, "Hear out your partners …..”
• The first of my connections
1. concept of Am Israel – Community – Keeping the community together, nourishing the community, providing for the community and making actions relevant for the community, these need to be continuously rethought and made relevant in today’s society,
o community connection is an underpinning of Midrasha
2. I see the passage that we read as describing the beginning of communal organization and collaboration.
a. The work done with the stakeholders meeting, as continuing what is written, in one of Yossi’s payulot, activities, we integrated the past and then began to move towards the future, working to strengthen our connections and relationships with our community stakeholders
3. The word burden is used, but not as a negative, but to connect, it can be defined as a charge: imposing a task upon assigning a responsibility.
The work that we do, cannot be done in isolation, it requires connection, and it requires a number of people
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4. The emphasis in the parasha on d’or l’dor generation to generation/continuity This was clearly made real and relevant with the first alumni get together that Anna did, which what I heard (first hand from my daughter, even though I was not allowed to go) great success.
5. In English, D’varim means words – significant in every aspect of life, but particularly with respect to teaching, It is also what we use to communicate our work as a Board, it is what structures our actions
So
• As we enter the new Midrasha year number # 41, or 40
• As Rabbi Tarfon has said, It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either" (2:16)
• So to all the board members and Diane,
6. May we have a year of learning, increasing engagement and connection
a. with each other and
b. with our stakeholders and
c. with our greater Jewish community to better provide for the d’or haba, the next generation
Shmot
Anna Martin
January 14, 2009
This week’s parsha, Shemot, the beginning of the Book of Exodus opens with a list. “Now these are the names (Shemot) of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt with Jacob; every man came with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Daphtali, Gad and Asher.”
For a portion that leads to a story of oppression and redemption so riveting and important that we are commanded to tell it every year to our children at Passover, it’s a little odd that the parsha would start with a long, boring list of names. I have focused on the opening sentence to mace a connection to the Midrasha experience and not just because it came first in the portion. To make that point I need to tell three little stories and reference a few more lines, so bear with me.
First story: When I asked myself the question, “why names?” I remembered an experience I had this summer working on the Federation’s Israel trip. The night before going to Yad Vashem, we had a world renowned Holocaust educator come and speak to the teens to prepare them for this visit and she did a thought exercise. She asked us to imagine a number related to the Holocaust, and of course, as most of you are probably thinking now, we all thought “6 million” and then she asked us to think of all the names we knew of people who made up that 6 million and in a room of over 100 people, we came up with less than 10. And then she asked us each to take on the charge of going to the museum the next day and learning one more name, one more story. Her lesson was profound and is echoed in this week’s parsha: names are important and if they are not recorded, if they are not born witness to, they are lost and forgotten and by extension the Jewish people becomes lost and forgotten. But it is her audience – those teens – that give the lesson its true meaning. Our students at Midrasha are the ones who will either bear witness or forget, and it is a huge part of our job at Midrasha to give them the tools and the motivation to witness. Are we teaching them to remember or to forget? I would argue that by sending teens to Midrasha we increase the likelihood that they will remember.
Which brings me to story two: For every teacher in our lives who profoundly influences us, there is a story or two that he or she told that sticks with us and this is my Yossi story. For those of you who don’t know, Yossi was both Midrasha teacher and mentor to me, as well as one of my Israel trip counselors over 10 years ago. When we were on that trip, at the unrenovated Yad Vashem on a very hot day, sitting in the Valley of the Communities where the names of the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany are – he told us the story of his own teen trip to Israel and his first major experience of mourning – tearing his clothing – when one of his counselors, his teacher, died on the trip. That story stuck with me and for some reason when I think of Yossi that story will often pop up. It obviously helped shape him and in turn me. When later in this portion God reveals himself to Mosheh at the burning bush and Mosheh asks what name he should call the people, God answers “Ehyeh asher ehyeh” which Rashi translates as “I will be what I will be.” Our teens are much like this. In a state of becoming and as they explore this, Midrasha, that mensch-making factory, should be a way for them to connect to their Jewish heritage – here, with friends, family and community, in Israel and around the world – and to carry the names and teachings into the future.
Which brings me to anecdote three. This past week I began teaching a new elective I’m calling, “The History of Antisemitism” and I asked students to introduce themselves and share what brought them to the class. Student after student mentioned subtle and blatant instances of anti-Semitic experiences. One of the students said that he was disgusted and worried about the anti-war teach-in resolution passed in Oakland schools and could we talk about it? Again, bearing witness, knowing the names and the stories and having the connections matter. Our teens NEED Midrasha. And I would argue that it is these connections – to our teachers, our friends, Israel and the Jewish community – that Midrasha so wonderfully builds. In light of the most recent events in Gaza, *I really offer thanks to all on this Board and all associated with Midrasha for continuing to strengthen this vital connection and community..
