What is the Future of Holocaust Education?

This Sunday, the 27th of Nissan, is the official established date of Yom HaShoah VeHagevurah, Holocaust Memorial Day (the actual observance is being pushed off one day by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate so as to avoid people violating Shabbat to take part in events on Saturday night). As such, this is a good time to raise for discussion an issue which weighs on my mind frequently.

On the one hand, Holocaust education is at a high point - entire libraries could be filled with the scholarly works and personal accounts that have been written about the Shoah, many States (including New Jersey) and European countries mandate Holocaust education, and Holocaust denial, while still very much alive, seems to be clearly defined as intellectually dishonest (Deborah Lipstadt's courtroom victory over David Irving being just one high-profile example). I have seen a Holocaust memorial in the US Air Force Base Museum in Dayton, Ohio and a memorial to Anne Frank at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis. Museums dedicated to the Holocaust are plentiful and approach the topic from a vast range of angles.

On the other hand, it appears to me that we are approaching a new era in educating about the Holocaust. The Holocaust ended 66 years ago, and thus the survivors who are still alive are in their 70's, while those survivors who have vivid memories to share are in their 80's. As such, the list of those available to provide first-hand accounts of their experiences is shrinking. Even those who are children of survivors and who wear that badge with a certain sense of pride - they are living examples and memorials to the fierce determination of their parents to survive in the face of the worst that mankind had to offer - are in their 50's and 60's. In other words, the landscape of those who are being asked to preserve the memory of what took place is increasingly populated by those who are two generations removed from the actual events.

Why is this important? I am not concerned about us forgetting the Holocaust - it has clearly become fixed as a major moment in Jewish history. Think about it - when listing major tragedies that have befallen us, the list is usually pretty short - Destruction of the Second Beit HaMikdash, Spanish Expulsion, Holocaust. While there are of course many more that can be added, this is clearly the shortlist. My concern can perhaps be summed up as "when does the Holocaust transform from a current event into part of history"?

What do I mean as a part of history? In short, it means an event that we can learn about while remaining emotionally detached. Take the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash as an example. We mention it in our davening on a daily basis, we end many a speech and dvar Torah with a prayer for its rebuilding, we spend three weeks every summer vicariously mourning for it, and we spend Tisha B'Av engaged in talking about the destruction in all of its gory detail - and how many people can say that they are truly touched and really feel the pain of the loss? Of course we can't - it happened two thousand years ago, and while we can perhaps understand intellectually what occurred and what the loss of the Beit HaMikdash means to us as a nation, it would take a herculean effort of emotions to truly cry over its destruction.

Pesach provides us with another example. All of us sat at our seder tables two weeks ago and probably mentioned that the Jews were in Egypt for 210 years. Did anyone bother to consider how long that was? Two hundred and ten years ago, John Adams was wrapping up his term as president of the US, France was in the throes of post-revolutionary chaos, the Vilna Gaon had just died and Rav Shimshon Refael Hirsch was not yet born. In other words - it was a LONG time ago. And yet, since our sojourn in Egypt is so far in the past, we are able to mention two centuries of enslavement and suffering as if it took place in the blink of an eye. Time does indeed heal all wounds.

And so to my question. At some point in the next fifty years, the Holocaust will begin to enter the annals of history. We can argue that this tragedy is different because of its size or its scope or the vast amount of material and evidence that is left behind from it, but the fact is that no human event has ever defeated time. And thus, my question for educators is what lessons do we feel should be the enduring ones from the Shoah? When everyone is three and four and five generations removed from the actual events, when no one exists who has even met a survivor, what do we want people to know when they learn about the Shoah? Discuss.

[Reminder - comments are welcome, but please do not post anonymously.]

Half Shabbos and the Dread of Pesach

About 7 months ago, Professor Alan Brill wrote a blog post that introduced many people to the term "half Shabbos" - which roughly refers to people, generally teenagers, who appear to be keeping Shabbat, yet have granted themselves an allowance to text on that day. Many reasons have been offered for how this phenomenon came about - is it the new form of teenage rebellion, are kids just too addicted to texting - but I would like to focus on what I consider to be a deeper cause of this occurrence, and in particular in light of the upcoming holiday of Pesach.

From my perspective, the issue with half-Shabbos is how it can be prevented. In a lecture that spoke to this issue, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of Riverdale spoke about the need to re-capture Shabbat for our children (and students). In a nutshell, if Shabbat is all about the don'ts and can'ts and shouldn'ts then we are conveying to our children that Shabbat is a day of restrictions, and of course that natural teenage need to somehow rebel will see Shabbat as an easy target. Religion is one of the prime areas in which kids express their individuality/rebelliousness, as there is not much that their parents can do to stop them short of punishment - and every parent and teacher knows that one has to be careful with a kid who is threatening to go "off the derech." Kids tend to know that parents are afraid that one infraction is just the first step to full-scale abandonment of religion, and thus for those who are so inclined, religion is quite a weapon in their struggles with parental or other authority.

However, if we can make Shabbat into a positive day, we may be able to get ahead of this problem. If we approach Shabbat, both at home in and the classroom, as a wonderful opportunity for rest, for coming together as a family (something that may be a rarity for many families during the week), for hanging out with friends, and so on, then we may be able to decrease the need to violate Shabbat as an act of rebellion - why would someone want to militate against something that is so positive?

[Obviously, if half-Shabbos is more a function of addiction to texting, then the journey may be a different one. I suppose that is for a different post.]

This comes to my mind as one and the same with how we approach Pesach. Full disclosure - I love Pesach. I love the seder, I love being with family and perpetuating long-standing traditions, I love the fact that it is a nice vacation during a beautiful time of year. Fuller disclosure - some years I make Pesach and some years I do not. When I do make Pesach, I am involved in every aspect of it, from cooking to cleaning, including lifting all sorts of pieces of furniture in search of Lord-only-knows-what.

That being said, few things grate on my ears more than hearing people complain in front of kids about the stress and labor involved of making Pesach. No question - there is much stress and much labor. We may very likely be cleaning more than we have to (consult your Local Orthodox Rabbi on that one), and keeping up with which products are and are not acceptable can be quite a challenge. Cooking for a cast of thousands with limited ingredients in the two days after the kitchen is kashered is a task that far exceeds making Yom Tov any other time during the year.

But what do our kids hear? Do they hear about the wonder of the holiday? Do they develop a sense of excitement and anticipation coming into it? When they are younger, they surely do, as they come to the seder armed with colorful projects and joyful songs and whatever else they learn in early childhood. But as our children and students grow up and become more sensitive to the subtle messages that we convey, are we aware of the messages that we are sending them? As with Shabbat, are we communicating that we are looking forward to all that this day has to offer, and we hope that they will as well, or are we presenting the holidays as days on which to rest from the burden of preparing for the holidays?

Standing in the Way of Technology

My school uses Google Apps for Education, a wonderful service that not only provides us with a Gmail-based email system, but also affords us many other Google tools such as documents and calendar which we find quite useful in a school setting. As many of you know, one feature of Gmail is gchat, whereby you can have a live chat (or even a video chat) on your Gmail screen while you conduct other business.

For one reason or another, our school has disabled chat for students (one feature of the education module of Google is that you can pick which applications are available). After the initial complaining about this, my 4th grade daughter came home one day and announced that she needed the computer at a certain time, because she and her friends were having a chat. But isn't chat disabled, we asked (although I knew what the answer would be)? She replied that they had figured out that it is possible to create a Google document and have a chat within the document - a wonderful tool that was created to allow people to collaborate on a document and talk about it as they create it. For my daughter and her friends, this was simply an easily-discovered and impossible to shut down loophole around attempts to squash their abilities to communicate in the way that they wanted to.

Now to the picture shown above. Most of you recognize it as the famous picture from the Tianemen Square demonstrations in China in 1989, when one brave individual momentarily stood up to an entire column of Chinese tanks as a show of protest against the Communist government. What is often unsaid about this picture is that this student's victory was short-lived, as the government eventually quelled the demonstrations and the regime lives on over two decades later.

To my mind, the tanks are our children and students using technology, and the lone student is anyone who tried to get in their way. We may succeed in making a rule here or disabling an application there, but they are more resourceful and far quicker than we perhaps give them credit for, and there is no way that they will lose this battle.

This has tremendous implications for schools and teachers. When we talk about technology in schools, often we talk about certain applications used in computer classes, or about policies restricting cell phones or laptops in class. If we are truly in the business of educating students, then doesn't it make more sense to teach them the responsible way to use these tools? Yes, if we are boring, they will look for distractions, and electronic devices are great distractions. But wouldn't it be so much better for everyone if our classes were not only interesting, but found a way to co-opt these tools (cellphones included!) so that our students wanted to be engaged? Do we ban Facebook in school? If so- why? At a certain age our students all have FB accounts, and by keeping it completely out of the school environment we are losing an opportunity to teach them how to use it responsibly. Do you think that lecturing them about the dangers of FB really resonates with everyone? With anyone?

There is so much more to say on this topic, and much is being written in many corners - in the world of general education, as well as in all parts of the religious spectrum - about how to properly incorporate the tidal wave of new technology which is developing faster than we can find ways to deal with it. I will blog further about some of the details in the future. For now, decide if you want to be in the tank, or if you want to be that student who looked like a hero for a moment, but ultimately lost the war.

Why Does the Jewish Week not Support Day Schools?

First, a disclaimer. This is not a post about the tuition crisis that is going on. There are plenty of blogs and comments and whatever that are devoted to that, and they tend to generate mostly heat and almost no light. Rather, this post is about institutional support for Yeshiva Day Schools, particularly in the media. The New York Jewish Week has a rather long article this week entitled "Teaneck Parents Eyeing Public (School) Option", which focuses on some of the various non-Yeshiva options that parents in Bergen County, NJ are exploring to help alleviate the awesome financial burden of paying for day school for multiple children. For those who are not aware, a Hebrew-language charter school has been approved in neighboring Englewood, NJ, and this article discusses both that option as well as the general option of sending children to public school, along with various ideas for after-school Talmud Torah programs to help compensate for the loss of a Jewish education. Late me state very clearly that I have nothing but sympathy for parents who are at the point of making these decisions, and I truly believe that most of them, in a perfect world, do want their children to be in Yeshivot but simply find the finances impossible. That said, I am bothered by the fact that the article slants towards the charter school/public school option, while giving no real reason while a Yeshiva education would be preferable (all things being equal).

A few noteworthy points:

1) The article begins by talking about Yitzi Flynn, and claiming that he "transferred his 10-year-old son from the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey to Teaneck’s Thomas Jefferson Middle School this fall." However, much much later on we find out that that shift had nothing to do with finances and everything to do with the educational needs of his child. Seems like a bit of a bait-and-switch to me.

2) In commenting on communal efforts to stem the crisis, the article first quotes "Mira" as saying "People are not planning properly; most are in denial. And the communal leadership across the board, no one is getting up and saying ‘This is not sustainable.'" While the next paragraph mentions groups such as the OU, YU, and JEFG that are all working on solving this very problem, and in fact are saying "this is not sustainable", the article only mentions what they have done and are working on towards the end, and follows the initial mention by saying that many parents see their efforts as "too little, too late." I ask - would it be better if they did nothing at all? As this is an article, and not an opinion piece, shouldn't Julie Weiner (the writer) have done her homework into the work of these organizations in this regard?

3) In discussing the after school Talmud Torah option, the article claims "While some question how much Judaic material an after-school program can cover, pointing to the failure of Talmud Torah programs in generations past, the Rosens are hopeful." I ask - "some" question? There have been actual studies done about the effectiveness of Talmud Torah programs, and they are not pretty. Ask the Conservative and Reform movements how successful Hebrew school has been for them! Granted, we are now dealing with a more observant and perhaps committed parent body, but there are nevertheless many issues with Talmud Torah programs that will still exist. Should Weiner have at least made mention of them? Or is her goal to note that this is just a matter of opinion and thus anyone could wind up being correct?

4) Weiner then notes that Yeshiva education is no guarantee of a child's ultimate religiosity, allowing a quote from one family that they have family members who went to Yeshiva and are apparently not so religious. While anecdotal evidence certainly exists in all directions, again there have been studies done that have found that a Yeshiva education is one of the most important factors that contribute to lifelong religious observance and involvement. But, again, Weiner makes no mention of this. Her agenda is clearly not to promote Yeshiva Day Schools.

5) I have no idea what to do with this quote: "Vidaver noted that day school is itself a relatively new phenomenon, “a movement of the past two generations.” - Some people would call that progress. Two generations ago, Julie Weiner, as a woman, might not have been given her current job - should we roll that back as well since it is only two generations old?

So here is my question - what is the role of a Jewish newspaper? I am sure that they would defend themselves with some high-minded statement about simply reporting the facts or speaking for all segments of the community or something like that. I think that is rubbish. We all know that even news articles can serve effectively as opinion pieces, and this article (written by someone who is not Orthodox) seems to do exactly that. I would hope that a Jewish newspaper would cover a sensitive issue such as this with the appropriate amount of sensitivity to both sides of the issue, not by promoting the side of the issue that they perhaps support (which is interesting to me, as the editor of the paper is Orthodox and sent his own children to Orthodox schools) while giving short shrift, if that much, to the other side. Day schools and community organizations need everyone's help if they are going to figure out solutions to this problem - the Jewish Week is helping stir up antagonism to that cause.

The Challenge of "Unteaching"

Every year around this time, I teach my students the laws of Purim. Inevitably, someone tells me that the mitzva of mishloach manot is fulfilled by providing two foods that require two different brachot rishonot. When asked where they learned this law, the students either do not know or credit their teachers in the younger grades.


Examples of such misinformation abound. My son in kindergarten actually objected to a book about tashlich that showed people throwing bread into the water (the teacher found me and asked if she should stop using the book - I politely referred her to her immediate supervisor); Countless people believe that we do not eat giraffe because we do not know where to shecht them (a myth debunked here); and don't get me started on when we take three steps back and forward at the beginning of Shemoneh Esrei (correct answer: before saying ה' שפתי תפתח - there is no connection between the number of steps and the number of words in that pasuk).


So how do these and countless other misconceptions come to be? Let me point out that some of these myths are fairly widespread, and thus there are teachers at higher levels of education who predictably reteach, or perhaps unteach, our students on these points (one high school teacher friend actually complained to me that I was taking away his fun by taking care of the unteaching before my students reached his class. Tough on him.).

The simple answer is that these misconceptions are taught in the early years of a child's education. And here I come to a bit of a minefield, so let me begin with the qualifiers. As a veteran Middle School teacher, I am constantly in awe of the work done by teachers in the younger grades, and more in awe as the kids get younger. I have the option of coming into class moderately prepared and putting material out for my students' consumption. I can have my students do a writing assignment to chew up half of a period. I can give tests or essays or projects or anyone of a million other things which take a middling amount of effort to compose and even less effort to execute (although a decent amount of effort to mark). Teachers of early childhood and the early grades are hands-on all the time. They have to constantly be reacting to the changing moods of their young charges, and they cannot simply give an assignment and hope for the best - they have to be always vigilantly looking out for myriads of nuances and eventualities until the last child goes home at the end of the day.

Those teachers are also charged with another awesome responsibility. They are the first teachers of halacha that children have. While they may not say that they are teaching halacha (they use more age-appropriate terms such as "teaching Pesach"), that is, in fact, what they are doing when they prepare children for each holiday with a collection of elaborate and colorful projects, songs, and worksheets.

And here is where things get tricky, and let me reiterate that I am in no way intending to offend. It is expected that someone hired as a Rebbe has spent a certain amount of time learning in a formal setting and has a certain level of comfort, familiarity, and facility with the standard volumes of halacha. While we would forgive a Middle School Rebbe who cannot cite every teshuva of the Chida, we want him to at least have reviewed the Mishna Berura before teaching halacha to his students.

To my knowledge, there is no such requirement or expectation of first grade teachers (to pick a grade at random). It is certainly far more important that they be experts of pedagogy and child psychology than of Shas and poskim. For many of them, their knowledge of halacha may be more mimetic than text-based (see Dr. Haym Soloveitchik's classic article for more on this topic). However, the fact remains that they are the first ones to introduce a wide variety of halachot to our children, and the fact is as well that it is very difficult to unteach ideas learned at a young age. We are often unduly influenced by our first impressions, and it can be a struggle to convince a child that what he or she has learned in the past is simply not so.

There is a further issue, and that is one of basic middot and respect. If I teach my students something contrary to what they learned in 3rd or 4th grade, ineveitably someone asks, "Does that mean that Mrs. So-and-so was wrong?" The correct answer to that question is often "yes", and yet simply giving that as an answer can be fraught with dangers, from leading students to doubt that which they have been taught, to leading them to look askance at the fine individuals who taught them in previous years.

So what is a teacher to do? On one level, one can appeal to the authority of the sources. Rather than say "I am right and your other teachers were all wrong", make use of original texts in class and inform students that there may be other opinions, but you have not seen them quoted in the classical sources. While this effectively is the same as saying that what they learned in the past was incorrect, it does so while encouraging a healthy sense of respect for tradition and authority, rather than focusing on the errors made by others (and thus encouraging a sense of lack of respect for tradition and authority).

It is also possible to work to prevent incorrect teaching. As my own children have come home over the years with the occasional erroneous information, I have relayed that fact to our school's Lower School Assistant Principal, who has taken the opportunity to work with the teachers going forward to correct any such mistakes. Rather than be a self-righteous parent calling up a successful teacher and saying "I know better", this allows the error to be corrected in a respectful fashion, as the AP generally either has or can create contexts wherein he learns with or reviews specific material with the teachers, and thus can come around to discussing the point of contention. We all make mistakes in our teaching, and most teachers are themselves students at heart and thus are open to hear how they can learn more and how they can then share that learning with their students.

I will end on a positive note. A vast majority of what our students are learning is correct, and the errors that I am focusing on are probably minor details that will not make a major difference in one's performance of mitzvot (it does not really matter why we do not shecht giraffes - the fact is that we are not shechting them one way or the other). As I said above, I am in awe of the work done by teachers of young children, and in particular of the teachers of my own children. May they continue their labors of love for many more years to come.

Color War in School - Why?

That is the question that we hear every year from a few people - isn't color war something done in camp? Isn't school for learning, not playing? And, of course, we never had this when I went to school, so it is not necessary and is a waste of time and resources.

I will admit that at one time early in my career, I was not fully on board with the idea of taking three days away from learning for a series of games and artistic presentations. And, since I did not have color war when I went to school, it went against my own pre-conceived notion of what was appropriate for school and what was not.

However, as I have become more seasoned as an educator, and as I have been intensely involved in the preparations for color war for several years, I have become pretty well convinced that this is not only a good use of time and resources, but that, in fact, this is fully consistent with what a school exists to do.

Let's look into this. Why do people send their children to school, and why do they send them specifically to a Yeshiva day school? There are many possible answers. If it is because they are legally obligated to send them to school, then obviously they are wasting their money paying for Yeshiva. If it is so that their children can learn both Torah as well as general studies in a Jewish environment, then I can understand why color war sounds like a waste of time. After all, despite all of our efforts to put some degree of content into color war (theme material, Tanach-based scavenger hunts, trivia competitions, and so on and so on), the fact is that most kids do not learn all that much during the days of color war, and thus formal learning does effectively grind to a halt during this time.

However, I would suggest that there is an additional layer of education that people want for their children when they send them to a Yeshiva day school. Obviously they want them to know how to read Hebrew and to learn Chumash. But more than that, they want them to come out of the school with a positive feeling, not only about themselves but about Judaism as well. This is a major challenge facing educators, and it is one that I will write more about in a different post. But it is a challenge that explains what is important about color war.

The answer is more than simply "If the kids are having fun in a Jewish context, then they will enjoy being Jewish." Frankly, I do not think that that is true. Kids are fairly savvy, and they are able to distinguish between Judaism being enjoyable and appealing to them and fun that happens to take place in a Jewish environment. To the extent that the former is true, the kids are likely to develop positive opinions of Judaism and Jewish practice; to the extent that the latter is true, they will likely develop meaningful friendships with their classmates, without necessarily developing deep feelings about Judaism per se.

[Obviously, there are many issues that influence a child's outlook and approach to Judaism, and the school is not the only one. I am working with the conceit that the school does play a significant role for many of its students. Of course, the particular home and community situations are crucial as well.]

Back to color war. In a well-designed and well-run color war (and I like to believe that we do it well in my school), children who do not necessarily shine in the classroom are given multiple opportunities to display their talents and take part in something that appeals to them. Our color wars have multiple opportunities for children with artistic talent, musical talent, technological talent, athletic talent, and even for those with academic talent. Students are placed into new groupings which cross grade lines, class lines, and hometown lines, and therefore have to develop or make use of social skills that often go ignored. While some activities are focused on an individual performance, most require some degree of teamwork, and the general sense of team spirit and camraderie that is the sine qua non of color war tends to be infectious (that's why we have one silent lunch each time - team spirit can get very loud).

And all of this is done in a decidedly Jewish context and spirit. The theme material may not be relevant during a 3 point shooting contest, but the various presentations are all based on the Torah/Jewish-based material. As such, every student has the opportunity to sing, paint, act, present, or cheer about Zionism or Jewish heroism or Jewish courage or whatever the theme is. And while the presentations may take place on the final day of color war, the preparation takes place over all of the days, and tends to involve every single child. Such moments leave a deep and lasting impression on children.

So that is color war - a chance for students to shine in ways that they do not normally shine in school; an opportunity to break down social barriers and form a community; and a moment in time when students put true passion and excitement into talking about (and cheering about) something decidedly Jewish. And so to answer the question posed by the headline of this post: "Color War in School - Why?" I would say simply "Why not"?

You are all individuals!

I got up to give the dvar Torah in davening the other day and began by describing the following scene (one of my favorites):



How was this relevant to anything? I explained to my 7th and 8th grade students that davening is a completely unnatural experience, and it in fact goes against everything that we do all day long. For an entire day, student have adults tell them that they are unique in some way or another. More and more, educators are learning the value of seeing beyond test scores and providing an ever-widening range of assessment, differentiated experiences, and extra- and co-curricular activities designed to allow each student the maximum number of opportunities to display and develop his or her talents and interests.

And then we bring them in to davening. Davening - where everyone says the same words, and sits and stands and bows and take steps forwards and backwards in the same way at the same time. Where the singing is imposed and everyone sings together with no voice standing out. How does this fit in with the messages that we impart to our students all day long, and given this fact, how can we blame them for not looking forward to davening?

The easy approach is to say that part of Judaism is the need to be a part of the collective. As much as we celebrate diversity of character, and as much as we would like everyone to develop their own talents, it is still important for everyone to have moments where they abandon their individuality in order to melt into the greater whole. Tefilla is the model for this - while each person has the right to add something to his or her own private Shemoneh Esrei, the fact is that tefilla, when done with a minyan, is a minyan-centric activity, with a uniform pace and any other changes being down on a communal level.

However, this is a lesson that is not easy for teenagers, and certainly not modern teenagers, to digest easily. And thus, there are two ways to go. One way is to say tough luck. Some lessons are not so easily learned, but they have to be learned because they are important. There is no question that there is some truth to this position. However, perhaps we can examine the other approach. Perhaps there is another way to explain tefilla to kids, or perhaps there is more that we can do to appeal to our students while still maintaining the integrity of tefilla. I will muse more about this in future posts - what do you think?