Ask the right questions

"With the arrival and maturation of my generation,
the Millenials, the question “Who is a Jew?” is rather passé."

David A. M. Wilensky is a young man with whom I have strictly - so far - digital relationship. I began reading his work when he was a college student writing for Jewschool and have been and remain impressed with the depth and creativity of his ideas. He published a piece in The Jewish Standard a few weeks ago that I just saw. I think he makes some very important and interesting points.

When I was in high school (in the 1970s!), the big conversation still revolved around Jewish identity in juxtaposition with American identity. Are you and American Jew or a Jewish American? Which is the noun and which is the adjective? When I first began teaching (in the 1980s) we were still designing lessons and activities around those questions. We over-did it. To my almost 16 year-old son, those questions are meaningless.

Following the CCAR decision on patrilineal descent, in 1983 and ongoing efforts by the religious parties in Israel to amend the law of return to require conversion according to halacha (Jewish law) and officiated by approved Orthodox rabbis, the conversation became "Who is a Jew?"

Now add a variety of Jewish population studies, studies of how Jewish communities are structured and now the Pew Report, and we find our lay and professional leaders wringing their hands and panicking over the imminent death of  (choose any or all): day schools, synagogue schools, synagogues, Jewish Community Centers and/or the continued cohesive existence of the Jewish People as a distinct group in America.

Please read David's article. It splashes some cold water on those of us still fighting about things that don't really matter to the Millenials. And while I do believe we have put a bit more emphasis on Young Adults in Jewish life than is appropriate, they will soon be 40 year olds and able to learn Kabbalah and be treated like the rest of us!

It begins here, but the full article is worth reading and can be read on the Standard's web page. There are a number of comments there as well. I invite a conversation, there, here or on JEDLAB (in Facebook), in particular on the implications for us as educators. Thank you David for permission to cross-post.

Ira

David A.M. Wilensky is a program associate at Big Tent Judaism/Jewish Outreach Institute. He lives in South Orange, and he is single, straight, and utterly shameless. 

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David A. M. Wilensky
Published: 6 March 2014

So, really, why be Jewish?

With the arrival and maturation of my generation, the Millenials, the question “Who is a Jew?” is rather passé.

Forget the halachic dimensions to this endlessly debatable topic. Forget all the moralizing arguments over the issue. Forget the demographically induced paranoia, the post-Holocaust hand-wringing, the Israeli legal maneuvering (not to mention the pandering that comes with it), and the denominational infighting. And — for heaven’s sake! — forget the Pew study.

The fact is that “Who is a Jew?” is the wrong question. To maintain our relevance — to regain it, really — the question we must ask today is “Why be Jewish?”

The problem with the who-is-a-Jew question is the binary premise from which it springs: that there is an “us” and a “them.” (Worse, perhaps is the accompanying hope that we will one day delineate a set of criteria that define who is an “us” and who is a “them.”) The premise itself is as boring and potentially harmful as the question it gives rise to. It has infiltrated our national debate in a variety of guises: Who is affiliated and who is unaffiliated? Who is an insider and who is an outsider? Who is a member and who is a non-member? Who is inmarried and who is intermarried?

And, of utmost importance in the case of Millenials: Are your parents both Jewish? For 48 percent of us, the answer is no.

In each version of the question, the implication is clear: One is good and one is bad. When we make these questions central, whatever our intention in asking them, the question that many people will hear is this: Are you a good Jew or a bad Jew? And labeling people “bad” Jews probably is not the best way to draw them into deeper engagement with Jewish life.

 At the very least, the Millenials I know are bored with all this who-is-a-Jew business. And at the worst, the idea that this question will be useful as we confront the challenges now before us is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the changes we see today.

continue reading the rest of the article

 

Will Social Networks Change the World, or Do You and I Still Have to do the Heavy Lifting?

My friend and colleague Josh Mason-Barkin sent a few of us an e-mail his question and my reply follow. I hope you will add your thoughts.

"Malcolm Gladwell (in the New Yorker) says online social networks are not capable of empowering real and meaningful change. If he's right, what does that mean for attempts to make real and meaningful change in Jewish education?"

Josh - thanks for tossing this football out.

I think you reduce Gladwell's point to the level at which it might be paralyzing, or at least unhelpful. On one level, I think he is absolutely correct. The internet is changing the world. Not the way the men at Woolworth’s in Greensboro did. 

The social network is not a movement, at least not in terms that lead people to sing “We Shall Overcome” in a way that suggests the way things are done must change and change now. It is more a change in the way we perceive and make meaning. Not as dramatic as making a stand on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March of 1965, nor did I think we are praying with our fingers on the keyboard as Heschel praying with his feet in Selma. 

What we can do is profound, but not as dramaticly or even as profound as what Gladwell describes.

I think Gladwell has used the civil rights movement as a straw man of sorts, but one that knocks you down instead of being bowled over itself. That doesn’t mean social networking is trivial. It just isn’t going to change the world the same way as actual civil disobedience and real time advocacy will. 

At the same time, let’s look at “Yes We Can” and the Obama online juggernaut of 2008. The campaign relied heavily on social networking to mobilize money, awareness, bodies at campaign rallies and votes. They didn’t give up traditional RT campaign methodology in favor of the digital campaign. Plouffe and company’s genius was integrating the two.

One of the things I find myself saying often is that the technology is awesome. But it is not the only thing! It is a tool, not a revolution. Our success will come from integrating. Nothing will replace the value of students and a teacher sitting around a table or under a tree with texts and ideas. As Grishaver  suggests, we need technology PLUS analog/Face to Face/RT experiences, not INSTEAD of them. If the revolution means all digital all the time, it will fail as soon as the kids master the next level of the video game. He says: 

“The real point is that real life still offers some unique opportunities: classroom community, love-interests, caring faculty and a speed and spontaneity that you don’t get pounding away a keyboard with your thumbs. Virtual community makes it possible to participate with less exposure. It often feels safer. Yet Solomon and Flexner bring a whole bunch of research sources that suggest participation is higher in blended circumstances. A friend is part of a heavily funded online dialogue. The story I got from this friend was that at first, before they ever met, their online dialogue was full of posturing and pontificating. Once the online group shared a retreat together, the dialogue shifted. It became real people talking to real people.”

What social media and other Web 2.0 technologies offer is access to learners and teachers in new and exciting ways. It offers that access because they are using the technology. When we were kids (and you guys sort of still are ;-}) we went home and played with our friends, did our homework, read books and watched TV. There was not much access to us for our Hebrew school teachers when we were not in the temple. 

My sons, aged 12 and 17, now multi-task. While doing homework, they access their text messages on the phones, chat and post items on Facebook, surf the web, watch YouTube videos, etc. 

If my teachers are social media savvy, 

AND the kids let them, they can initiate or invite contacts that were unimaginable. 

AND we can entice them into other Jewish learning modes through third web sites and applications like the Embassy of Israel, the work David and others are doing in Second Life, and even blogs like Jew School and David Wilensky’s stuff. 

I am actually putting together a class called “Judaism, there’s an App for that” for our community high school. 

I am hoping to explore how we can get students to focus both their digital and analog eyes on Judaism.

So Gladwell is right. But his point doesn’t change the need for us to engage in digital forms of building learners, learning and learning communities.