VaYeshev, Part II

He was groomed for his role from early childhood, doted on by his father and prepared for the future in many ways.  He was good at what he did, and focused on what was ahead.  He even dreamed about it.

As an adult he achieved fame and wealth, as well as the attention of at least one woman (probably more) who - for whatever reason - was attracted to him.  Was it his position?  His looks?  His proficiency at his task?

How could one not talk about Tiger Woods in connection to this week's parasha!?!  I have heard the opinion that for a person in his position it is impossible to resist the temptations all around him.  Money, power, fame - all strong attractants, it seems, to groupies.  Is it even possible to keep track of all the famous men who have - just within the past year - been exposed as "players"?

How did Yosef resist the temptations that these men gave in to?  Did he understand that his role was too important to jeopardize with a personal scandal?

Is this why we call him Yosef HaTzadik - Yosef the Righteous?

I have it on good authority that sixth graders are quite familiar with the current saga of Tiger Woods, so I would not hesitate to use the story as a trigger for discussion of this week's parasha.

Does Tiger Woods need a lesson on Jewish values?
And by the way - what would be appropriate teshuva for these public figures?

VaYeshev

The stories of Yosef, well-known and often-retold in religious school classrooms, contain more detailed narration than any other of the stories of B'reisheet.  There is more description of peoples' feelings than anywhere else.

A few thoughts:

1. The brothers of Yosef seem to have little love or affection for their "baby" brother.  What is it about the family dynamics that leads to their actions?  Who do you hold responsible for the situation?  Whose responsibility do you think it was to improve the situation?  Explain your answer.
2. What do you think we are supposed to learn from the encounter Yosef has with the "man" when he is looking for his brothers?  What does the story tell us if the "man" is simply a man?  What if the "man" is actually God's messenger?  
3. Where do you think Reuven was when the brothers decided to sell Yosef to the Ishmaelites?  Whose idea was it to do this?
4. Does Reuven seem to know what has actually happened to Yosef?  Does your answer to this question affect how you feel about him?
5. Skipping over (for the moment) the story of Yehudah and Tamar, what are your thoughts about Yosef's behavior in the house of Potifar?
6. What kind of person do you understand Yosef to be from what we read in this week's parasha?  If you didn't know what comes next, what might you imagine at this point?
7. Back to Yehudah and Tamar - what is this story doing here?  How can you connect it to the story of Yosef?  To the bigger story of the development of the Jewish people?

Some interesting commentaries that may help you shape your thoughts:

• God Was In That Text
• G-dcast - take a look, click on and read the lyrics, and note how much is not in the original Torah text.  What do you think about adding this additional material?  Does it change the story?  Does it make it clearer?  Does it confuse the issues?  Explain your response.
• Divine and Human "Nudging"on the Path of One's Destiny is written by Jill Minkoff, a student at the Academy for Jewish Religion.  What is the tension between "destiny" and "free will" that she describes?  How can you know if your decisions are the decisions God would want you to make?  What is "bashert"?  

Social Networking before the Age of Twitter

What Facebook Can't Give You, a fascinating article that appeared in the November 25th issue of Wall Street Journal, describes a group of approximately 20 men, of whom 75% happen to be Jewish, who have been meeting together since 1957.

I recommend the article as a good read, but also for the following paragraph, which appears somewhere near the end.

'Daddy's Ideas'

'The men had hoped their sons would create an adjunct group that would one day assume the Wednesday 10 mantle but none took the initiative. "Daddy's ideas are not the ones children tend to take on," says Mr. Menschel.'

 Does that mean those ideas were not good?  Of course not.  I think it means that the founding generation cannot expect those that follow to necessarily value what they value.  Or, at the least, cannot expect the next generation to express even the values that are shared in the same ways.

As this is true for those 'movers and shakers' in the Wednesday 10, it is often true of our institutions.  It is the reason that to be successful going forward institutions have to be willing to re-invent themselves, to welcome the new ideas of those who come after the founders.

And this is particularly challenging in the context of a religious institution.  Because most religion is by its nature conservative, and Judaism is no exception, there is a need to preserve the values, practices and wisdom of  the past.

How we do that in a popular culture that often seems to look ahead, with little regard for the past, is one of the most difficult tasks we face.

Meaningful Assessment

How do we know if our learners have learned?  Sometimes we ask them outright:

Baby Blues Nov 29

By Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott

This cartoon appeared in Sunday's newspapers, and is not yet available online.  You may be able to find a site that shows it.  For those who cannot, there are 3 frames in which a teacher asks the class as a group whether they understand the work, whether they have any questions, and whether they know what to do for homework.  They all answer "YES" to the first question, "NO" to the second, and "Yes to the third.  The final panel shows that the student actually has no idea what she learned or what she is supposed to do for homework.

And sometimes we get meaningless answers!!

There are better ways to assess learning.

A good article - Why Every Student Needs Critical Friends, by Amy Reynolds, describes one way of involving the learner in assessment.

Understanding formative and summative assessment is the subject of this clearly written article in the December 2007 issue of Educational Leadership.  It urges the teacher to help the learner answer these three questions:

1. Where am I going?
2. Where am I now?
3. How can I close the gap?

A list of possible assessment tools is part of this extensive learning module from edutopia, a reliable source of good information for educators.

Developing valuable and meaningful assessment is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching and learning.  I urge you to find out more.  I also urge you to try different types of assessment in your classroom, knowing ahead of time that some will work better than others in helping your students answer the 3 important questions above.  And remember, if they can't answer question #1, they can't begin to answer the other 2 questions.

It won't be perfect when you start, but if you are serious about evaluating learning and helping your students do the same I am sure you will get better at it as you go along.

VaYishlach

As I typed the title to this post I thought about the column in yesterday's NY Times Magazine about Camel Case, a term I had never heard before but which describes the practice of capitalizing letters within a word (as in the hump of a camel!).  Just a note - when I do this, it is to emphasize the use in Hebrew of attached prefixes and suffixes.  Not really important, except I hope it helps the reader differentiate the prefix or suffix from the word.

And now to the parasha:
There are several stories in this week's parasha.  Yaakov is told by God to return to Canaan.  Knowing his brother is there, and more than a little nervous about meeting him after all these years, he devises a plan to send messengers ahead.  The rest of the summary is here at My Jewish Learning, with some questions you can think about .  As we have seen each week, there are some aspects of this story that are troubling to the 21st century reader.

[By the way, I recently read in a sixth grade textbook that all this took place in "Palestine", with no mention of the land of Canaan.  Strange, since the country was not named "Palestine" until the Roman conquest.  One wonders who is writing (or editing) social studies textbooks.]

G-dcast.com is a site that offers a short (usually about 4 minutes long) cartoon video about each parasha of the Torah.
In its video of Vayishlach the creator of this week's commentary suggests that the "man" with whom Yaakov wrestled was neither an angel nor himself.  Watch the episode by clicking on the link and consider whether or not you agree with the conclusion.

The rape of Yaakov's daughter Dinah is another of the incidents described in detail in this parasha.  Many of you have read The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant.  This novel based on the incident described here has been widely discussed, particularly in women's groups - the audience to whom the book seems to be addressed.

• Do you think it is appropriate to rewrite stories from the Torah today?
• Why might one want to do this?
• Why do women today often react negatively to stories in the Torah?
• In what way might this story sound different to girls [and women] than to boys [and men]?  How might your teaching acknowledge this?

I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

What does it mean to be Jewish?

Thanksgiving, an "American Holiday," is a feast in which my family and I participate with pleasure every year.  Because it is a holiday we share with all Americans - at least potentially - it is a day in which we might give some thought to what it means to be Jewish and American.


Big Ideas:

• Jewish identity is complex, and means different things to different people
• Maintaining separate identity within a culture that encourages shared identity is challenging
• Developing and transmitting identity can take various forms

Essential Questions:

• What is Jewish identity?
• What is the difference between "acculturation" and "assimilation?"
• In what ways does identity develope?
• What are the challenges involved in maintaining religious identity within a culture?

Learning Activities:

Four articles appeared this week that seemed to illustrate both the challenges and the outcomes of maintaining identity.

Three Clergymen Three Faiths, One Friendship, by Laurie Goodstein, is the story of a minister, a rabbi and a sheik who have developed a relationship across their religious differences, and who speak as a group to audiences of all faiths.  They suggest that their relationship is strong because they believe:

"..not [in] avoiding or glossing over their conflicts, but by running straight at them."

 According to the rabbi in the group, the following statement is how they see each others' religious beliefs:

"This is the truth for you, and this is the truth for me."

Does this sound Jewish to you?  Can something be 'true' for me and something different 'true' for someone else?  What does this mean to you?

How to Say Thanksgiving in Mandarin by Scott Simon describes his family and many others in the world today.  He writes about the diverse religious and ethnic identities in his own family and in those around him.

• As Jews, how do we define our identity?
• What is the "Jewish people?"
• What is "Am Yisrael?"
• What is "Jewish food?"
• What is the meaning of Israel in your life?
• How do you celebrate the Jewish holidays?  

The answers may be different for different Jews, because being Jewish has many aspects.  Reading this article may encourage you to articulate what your identity means to you.

The Other Education by David Brooks talks about his realization that Bruce Springsteen had a powerful impact on the way in which he sees the world.  While Springsteen may or may not be the influence we as Jewish educators are waiting for, several statements by Brooks certainly say something important to us:

"...It's generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious..."

"The uplifting experiences alone were bound to open the mind for learning."

"I do think a message is conveyed by the way he  [Springsteen] continually  situates himself within a tradition."

What do these statements tell us about the experiences we need to be providing for our learners?
How can we maximize the emotional learning that Brooks talks about in his column?

A Tradition that Cherishes Poker, not Pumpkin Pie is a whole other story - it describes a community, or at least a portion of a community - that has decided, for a number of reasons, that the celebration of Thanksgiving involves a trip to Mohegan Sun rather than "over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house.."

• What happens when a group develops its own customs that are not aligned with those of the majority culture within which it lives?
• Why might it be difficult to maintain this separation in succeeding generations?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of having unique ethnic and/or religious customs?

Assessment:

• Create a collage that expresses your Jewish identity
• Write a short description of your Jewish identity
• Share an anecdote about your family's Jewish celebration of a particular holiday with a partner.  Compare and contrast the ways in which your family celebrates with those of your partner's family.

Teachers Selling Lessons

You may have read the article in the NY Times about teachers buying and selling their lessons on the internet.

Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions, by Winnie Lu

The article is interesting, and even more interesting are the responses from readers.  As an educator I believe strongly in collaborative effort, and in my opinion teachers can often learn as much or more from their colleagues as they can from "experts" who drop in for a session or two and then leave.

On the other hand, one of the worst lessons I ever taught was one that I had participated in as a learner and then attempted to present to a different group as the teacher.

What is the significance of these two seemingly opposing threads?

• I believe that good teaching ideas should be shared.
• Some people are fortunate enough to be paid by publishers to create lessons that will be sold to other teachers as books.
• Some people are fortunate enough to teach in institutions in which the culture provides time and support for sharing ideas with colleagues.
• All good teaching requires time for preparing lessons - whether or not one starts with a template provided by a teachers' guide, book or on-line site.
• Anyone who attempts to teach someone else's lesson without taking the time to make it his or her own will probably not be successful.

Teacherspayteachers.com is the website referred to in the Times article.  I looked to see if there were Jewish educational lessons available, and found some on the Shoah, one on the lunar calendar, and little if anything else.

There are, however, on-line sites that can be very helpful to Jewish educators. 

I suggest you type the words Jewish Lesson Plans into your search engine and see what comes up.  You may be surprised at the resources you can access.

Just remember - no one should try to teach some else's lesson without making it his or her own.

Vayetze

And so the drama continues - and our ancestors continue to act in ways that challenge us to see them as models upon which we will structure our behavior.

There are a number of interesting commentaries you can access at My Jewish Learning.  I particularly enjoyed this one - I Have a Dream, by Rabbi Ed Rosenthal.  And yes, the use of Martin Luther King's words is an intentional part of the essay.

Rabbi Melissa Crespy writes about the complicated family dynamics evident in this parasha and suggests they can help us better understand our lives today.

There are, however, a few questions that occurred to me and to which I wasn't able to find answers in the commentaries I examined.  Perhaps you can help figure out some answers:

1. In 28:11 Jacob is described as taking stones to rest his head on.  Sorry - but couldn't he find something more comfortable to put under his head?
2. Is there a relationship or comparison between the tower in Bavel and the ladder in this parasha?
3. Why does the text identify Avraham as Yaakov's father rather than Yitzhak?
4. In 28:14 the Hebrew reads:  Yesh Adonai bamakom hazeh.  What is the reason for the word "yesh?"  The translations seem to be uniform as saying "God was in this place",  but you don't ned the word "yesh" if that is the translation.  It seems to me that a better translation would be "There is God (or perhaps 'godliness') in this place.  Does that change the meaning for you?
5. Verse 28:22 has Yaakov making a deal with God - if...then...  What can it mean that Yaakov promises to accept God if God provides certain material necessities?  Is there a rationale that states we only accept God if God provides for and protects us?
6. Verse 31:53 - The English translation reads,  "... the God of Avraham and the god of Nahor..."  But Hebrew doesn't use capital letters, and the phrase in Hebrew uses the identical term for both "gods".  What's that about?  Does the god of Nahor exist alongside the God of Avraham as an equal in this text?

Perhaps you have answers to these questions - they certainly suggest rich discussions you can have.  Perhaps you can share your answers with the rest of us.

Jewish Wisdom in the Workplace

Shayla McKnight wrote an article about her workplace where, unlike many other workplaces we are all familiar with, gossip is not tolerated.  In fact, when she began working there, she was told explicitly,  "There's no back-stabbing here, and no office politics.  Gossiping and talking behind someone's back are not tolerated."

Workplace Gossip?  Keep It To Yourself

The interesting thing is that it works!  The employees actually do not gossip, and if someone breaks that rule, s/he is called out on the issue and reminded about the policy.

We often have rules in our classrooms stating that lashon hara and rechilut are not acceptable, but in my experience we rarely go the extra step by following up and holding not only our students but ourselves to the high standards we articulate.  Maybe we need to state the policy as part of our induction process for new teachers as well as new students and their families.  And everyone would certainly benefit if we insisted on taking the policy seriously.

There is another section of the article that helps to explain why there is a real feeling of community in this workplace, and I believe it has possibilities for the classroom as well.

"There's a mix of personalities in any company, and rarely does everyone in a workplace like one another.  but I believe that half the battle is in how people communicate.

 When employees are hired here, they're given a communications assessment, a commercial program that the company uses to pinpoint a person's dominant communications style.  the styles are linked to colors that identify how each employee likes to communicate.

If someone is a "red," for example, he or she appreciates when others are direct and state the facts quickly.  A person who's a "blue" enjoys having all the details, and time to process them.  A "yellow" is spontaneous and likes a personal connection.

I'm a "green"  That means I'm sensitive and like to be approached as courteously as possible;  greens tend to be compassionate and supportive. 

Nameplates on our desks have a color bar to identify our styles, ...  This system lets everyone know how co-workers prefer to be approached and it goes a long way in promoting harmony."

What if we gave our students the same courtesy this company gives its employees?  What if we really treated our students as individuals?  We know about multiple intelligences, and varied learning styles.  We know about multiple assessment tools which give our learners the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned in different ways.

What if we also allowed them a voice in defining the way in which they communicate - with each other as well as with us - so they would feel safe and respected in our schools.

I'm willing to bet that the atmosphere in our classrooms would be different - in a very good way.

 

Twitter in Teaching?

Many years ago, when CAJE was a young organization, I went to my first CAJE conference.  Returning home I could hardly wait to share the innovative ideas that surfaced there with the principals and teachers in my congregational school.  I still remember the response of the principal:
"Who needs Alternatives to Jewish Education?" he asked.
I corrected him.
"It was the Conference on Alternatives IN Jewish Education," I said.
I'm not sure I convinced him.

We've come a long way, I hope, in looking at innovation in learning.  One example is a website, jlearn2.0 which highlights leading-edge thinking in this area.

I want to recommend you read this post at jlearn2.0 entitled Why My Students Were Texting in Class... and Learning.  It is an exciting window into use of what might be seen as distractions to advance learning.  We need to use all the tools available to engage our students.

Toldot

Of all the Torah portions in B'reisheet this may be my all-time least favorite.  Each year I struggle with the character of Ya'akov as it is expressed in his actions here.  I remind myself that this text is here for a purpose - as I believe all the text in the Torah is - and wonder once again what God wants me to learn as I read and re-read the descriptions of the actions of all the players here.

• Yitzhak, whose relationship with his father Avraham had to have been affected by the experience at Har HaMoriah.  He loves his wife, he loves his eldest son, he doesn't really trust his own judgment.
• Rivkah, who left her immediate family to become the wife of a distant relative, who was unable to bear children until her husband intervened with God, and who appears to believe she has the right to manipulate the people around her to further her goals
• Ya'akov, who didn't show much initiative as a youngster, who went along with his mother's ruse and outright lied to his father about who he was in order to receive his father's blessing
• Eysav, who - on the surface at least - seems the most innocent of all the actors in this play.  He hunts, he tries to please his father, he gets taken advantage of by those more clever than he.

So what are we to learn from this?

Are these the lessons?

1. It's OK to lie to your parents if it gets you what you believe you deserve.
2. The ends justify the means.
3. Jews aren't supposed to be good outdoorsmen

Somehow I doubt these are the lessons we're supposed to learn from this section of Torah.

Here are some ideas I prefer:

1. Food can be an expression of love and part of an important experience.  That's the idea in David Kraemer's commentary here
2. Rivkah has amazing clarity about God's Big Ideas.  She knows what the overarching plan is and does what is necessary to advance it.  That thought is expressed in The Women's Torah Commentary in the article by Rabbi Beth J. Singer here
3. Today as in the time of the Bible water is the key to survival.  We have a responsibility to treat the land and its resources with care and respect.  That idea is connected to this week's parasha in the commentary by Rabbi Yuval Cherlow at the website of Canfei Nesharim

How do you understand this parasha?  What Jewish values do you see here?  What do you think God wants us to learn from this portion?

Please feel free to share your ideas as comments to this post.

Our Most Important Job

Helping students learn to evaluate available information is more important today than ever before. In the past, we as teachers were in the business of conveying content. We had the 'truth', and we chose the books that had the 'truth.'

In today's world there is more information at our learners' fingertips than there used to be in entire libraries. Unfortunately, much of that information is misleading at best and totally inaccurate at worst.

This article about the Dead Sea Scrolls is an example of how information on the internet can be manipulated by anyone with the desire to do so.

2000-Year-Old Scrolls, Internet-Era Crime

By sharing this article with your students you may help sensitize them to the possibility that what they read must always be read somewhat skeptically - and to introduce them to reliable sources of review, such as snopes.com and urbanlegends.about.com which carefully evaluate content.

A learner who develops critical thinking skills is a learner on the way to life-long learning.

What's Really Important?

We know that people learn what they perceive as important. Our challenge as teachers is to find out what that is for our learners. Here's an example from medicine that may bring a chuckle, but ultimately may help you realize the importance of motivation in learning.

Treating Sleep Apnea with a Golf Club

Big Idea:

People learn what is important to them

Essential Question:

What is already important to your learners?

How can we make that which is important to us important to our learners?

Activities teachers can do to support uncovering the Big Idea:

Read what they read, watch what they watch, listen to their music. (I don't suggest you abandon your interests in favor of theirs, but you have a responsibility to be familiar with their cultural context if you are going to craft learning experiences they can relate to)

Provide time in class for students to talk about what they are interested in - to each other and to you.

Listen to your students.

Assessment: How will you know this is working?

Your students make more personal connections to the content of the learning.

Remember - your ultimate goal as a Jewish educator is to help your learners reach a level at which their Jewish knowledge, belief and practice are an important part of their lives and identities; a level at which what they are learning and doing is important not only to you as their teacher, but to them in their lives both within and outside the institution in which they learn.

Hayei Sara

We have been reading the parashot this year through the lens of language - the power of words.

Big Idea #1:

• Stories can change depending on the storyteller and the audience. That there are different versions does not necessarily mean one is true and others are not.

In Nechama Leibowitz' discussion of this parasha she compares the words Avraham uses in talking to his servant with the words the servant (Eliezer) uses in describing the task to the family of Rivka. You can read the commentary here. What are the similarities? What are the differences? What do you think explains why certain words or phrases are different in the two versions?

Essential Questions:

1. Have you ever told a story more than once?
2. Does it always sound the same?
3. What might be the reasons the story changes from one occasion to another?
4. Is there a person in your family who is the "custodian" of family stories? Who gets to say, "That's not how it happened!"
5. How does your position in the family affect your "ownership" of the family stories? How are family stories preserved?

Big Idea #2

• People differ in the way they respond to life experiences.

Essential Questions:

1. What are some of the experiences Sarah had in her life?
2. Do you know people who have had the same concrete experiences, either good or bad, but whose response to those experiences is different? How can you explain this?
3. How can the way one responds to an event affect what comes afterward?
4. What are some lessons in Torah, in Jewish wisdom and thought, which can help us respond appropriately to life events?

Big Idea #3

• Not all important ideas or events are broadcast loudly and clearly. Sometimes they are not so obvious at first glance

Essential Questions:

1. According to the Torah, who buried Avraham?
2. What, if anything, surprised you about this?
3. Do you believe this incident symbolizes a reconciliation between the brothers? Explain your opinion.
4. What are some occasions in family life that might lead to separation? to reconciliation? What are some ideas we can use to encourage shlom bayit, peaceful relationships within a family?

Jewish Music in Popular Cultural Settings

Matisyahu - Jewish/rap/reggae performer - has written and performed the soundtrack for a commercial about the Vancouver Winter Olympics you can see here.

His original song is here.

Great opportunity for compare and contrast:

What is the big idea of the lyrics as used in the commercial? Why do you think the creators of the commercial chose this song? This segment of the song?

What do you think is the big idea of the lyrics in the complete song?

Does the segment reflect the entire song? Explain your answer.