eJewish Philanthopy.com, run by Danny Brown is one of the blog e-mails I read first every day. He finds the most interesting postings from throughout the Jewish world (not just philanthopy) and shares it with everyone. This posting from the Hillel blog made me smile. And think. you?
Hillel is constantly changing to keep pace with college students. With the advent of the annual Beloit College Mindset List, Hillel offers the following unscientific survey of Jewish cultural influences that have helped shape the identities of this year’s freshman class.
Born largely in 1992, today’s freshmen will delight – if not surprise – their parents by becoming the graduating class of 2014 in four years. Here, then, are the Jewish ideas that are kicking around in the minds of today’s first-year students.
1. Oreos have always been kosher.
2. McDonalds has always served bagels.
3. Women have always been rabbis.
4. Soviet Union? What Soviet Union? Jews have always been free to come and go from something once quaintly called “The Soviet Bloc.” Some have even been in their towns and classrooms!
5. iPhones and Blackberrys have always included Jewish holidays.
6. Half of their parents have always been non-Jewish.
7. September 11th is a distant childhood memory.
8. They don’t remember the debut of Schindler’s List but the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has always been open.
9. They don’t remember the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin or the death of the Rebbe.
10. They barely remember the bombings of the Second Intifada.
11. Israel has always had relations with Egypt, Jordan and the PLO.
12. Trips to Israel have always been free thanks to Taglit-Birthright Israel.
13. Israel has always been known for its high-tech wonders and not its kibbutzim.
14. Israel has always had first-run movies and TV shows.
15. They have more stamps in their passports than they have ever put on an envelope in their lives.
16. Community service is a requirement for high school graduation.
17. News from Israel has always been instantly available -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- on the Web. And Google has always translated Hebrew to English (and vice versa).
18. Calls to Israel or elsewhere overseas have always cost less than $0.10 per minute – and have always been free via Skype.
19. They learned the concept of Bar/Bat Mitzvah from Krusty the Clown.
20. They LOVE to laugh at anti-Semites like Borat – especially when he is speaking Hebrew.
21. The Real World has always been on television and nearly every season has included a Jewish cast-member.
22. “Dylan” is Jakob, not Bob.
23. Adam Sandler is the guy from the movies, not from Saturday Night Live (and they learned his “Chanukah Song” along with “Dreidle, Dreidle, Dreidle”).
24. Jon Stewart has always been a late night host. Who is Johnny Carson?
25. Willy Wonka is Johnny Depp, not Gene Wilder.
26. Elliot Gould is known as the father of Monica and Ross Geller, not as Trapper John McIntyre.
This is turning into a week of daily posts by people who make me think. I hope they make you think as well - and react. I have known Fran Pearlman longer than she would like me to say. She is an educator's educator, and whenever we are together I learn something new. When she came to the Detroit area in the early 90's she demonstrated a mastery of special needs education that I could only hope to achieve - and this was back when most of us were just bemoaning doctors who over-prescribed Ritalin, rather than redesigning our Religious Schools to be responsive to the needs of nearly all learners. This was published today in the The Jewish Educator, Summer 2010/5770, the journal of NewCAJE. A conversation about NewCAJE is for the future. For now, I thank them for creating a new forum for Fran's learning and teaching to be shared more widely. And I cannot agree enough that we need to get much better at inclusion and meeting all learners where they are. I am very proud of the work of my congregation. We have done a lot, but we still have far to go. I would love to hear how you are addressing these needs in your setting. -- Ira
Fran Pearlman
In 1981 I began my administrative career in Jewish education in a part-time position. The responsibilities were described as hiring, training, and supervising staff; creating programs; and writing curriculum. Nothing was shared about the students in terms of learning styles or preferences, and certainly the words “inclusion” or “special needs” were never mentioned. At that time, special education was a separate entity in the secular world and certainly in the Jewish education world. There were separate classrooms with specifically trained and experienced faculty who, theoretically, met the needs of those students who were classified as “special edu.”
Almost thirty years later, Jewish education across denominational lines finds itself facing the challenge of inclusion, modification, adaptation, and a vast, new lexicon of educational terms. To date, Jewish education has advanced only baby steps toward the inclusion of all students. The time has come to confront this need and move from being Jewish educational institutions of inclusion by default to ones of inclusion by design. The time has arrived to formally address the challenge of inclusion by providing our educational leadership with the proper training and knowledge in order to welcome all students into their schools. Jewish educational leaders need to be both educated and welcoming; to be both cognitively aware of the needs of all students and able to expend the emotional investment to invite all students into a warm and inclusive community.
Where does the transformation need to take place? The first place is in the formal training of our educational leaders. Just as innovative and up-to-the-minute pedagogy, with its strategies and philosophies, are a necessary and integral part of the education of these future leaders, special education experience and training also is an essential component. Providing the terminology, definitions, strategies, and approaches of special education and how it can be adapted to Jewish educational settings is critical. Tools and practice in communicating with parents of special needs students also is essential for the development of a successful inclusionary school. Educating these leaders about the difference between a self-contained classroom and inclusion, the benefits of each, and when each is necessary or preferred are other aspects of this education.
The second level of education needs to be directed towards the entire faculty. Statistically, 4-5% of every classroom consists of students with some special needs, diagnosed or undiagnosed. Sometimes we know who these students are and sometimes we do not, however, teaching to reach all students and to the multiple skills and intelligences in the average classroom is a charge to each and every Jewish teacher. It is up to the Jewish school and its educational leader to provide appropriate and regular guidance and education in how teaching to all can maximize the learning of all.
The demand for successful inclusion is not new to Judaism. The mandate for inclusion is steeped in Jewish tradition. Within the bounds of Jewish law, rulings specifically are articulated regarding the disabled in Jewish ritual law. Leviticus 19:14 specifically prohibits cursing the deaf or putting a stumbling block before the blind. Rather than ignoring those with disabilities, the body of Jewish law specifically addresses those who are blind, deaf and/or mute. While these categories of disabilities certainly are not exhaustive and do not address the scope of the disabilities found in our society today, it is a beginning, based on what was known then.
We are well past the beginning of fulfilling the mitzvah of inclusion. It is time that we are proactive and assertive in both our philosophy and in our actions as we move towards Jewish educational institutions of inclusion by design.
Fran Pearlman is the Director of Education at Oceanside Jewish Center, NY, and serves as a consultant for MatanKids, which provides consultation and direct service in the area of special education in Jewish educational settings. Fran@matankids.org
This article was published in the New York Times this past Sunday and on their on-line edition on Saturday. I posted a link on Facebook as did a gozillion others and it has gone a little viral. In cased you missed it here it is. My friends who lean a little or a lot in one political direction or another may disagree about many of Friedman's opinions, particularly about Israel. Let's agree to disagree on that if we must. My friend Fred Greene says (and I agree) that "Friedman writes a brilliant article on constructive criticism vs. destructive criticism of Israel." And my old camp friend Rick Teplitz said "Want Israelis to listen to you? Start by reading this" referring to this article. So I invite your comments, not on Friedman's general political leanings, but on what he has to say in this article. As educators I think we can learn something about how to teach the reality of Israel and have real conversations about really hard topics - and help our students and ourselves come out the other end still loving Israel and being hopeful for its future. Maybe I'm a cockeyed optimist, but I think it has more to do with believing that Israel is more than a dream and more than some bitter realities.
One other point. In Hebrew, the name of the film is Chaim Yekarim. It is a literal translation. My midrash is on the fact that grammar requires the word for life - Chaim - be in the plural, and that the adjective, precious be in agreement. More than one life is precious...
I just saw a remarkable new documentary directed by Shlomi Eldar, the Gaza reporter for Israel’s Channel 10 news. Titled “Precious Life,” the film tracks the story of Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a 4-month-old Palestinian baby suffering from a rare immune deficiency. Moved by the baby’s plight, Eldar helps the infant and mother go from Gaza to Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital for lifesaving bone-marrow treatment. The operation costs $55,000. Eldar puts out an appeal on Israel TV and within hours an Israeli Jew whose own son was killed during military service donates all the money.
The documentary takes a dramatic turn, though, when the infant’s Palestinian mother, Raida, who is being disparaged by fellow Gazans for having her son treated in Israel, blurts out that she hopes he’ll grow up to be a suicide bomber to help recover Jerusalem. Raida tells Eldar: “From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You’re free to be angry, so be angry.”
Eldar is devastated by her declaration and stops making the film. But this is no Israeli propaganda movie. The drama of the Palestinian boy’s rescue at an Israeli hospital is juxtaposed against Israeli retaliations for shelling from Gaza, which kill whole Palestinian families. Dr. Raz Somech, the specialist who treats Mohammed as if he were his own child, is summoned for reserve duty in Gaza in the middle of the film. The race by Israelis and Palestinians to save one life is embedded in the larger routine of the two communities grinding each other up.
“It’s clear to me that the war in Gaza was justified — no country can allow itself to be fired at with Qassam rockets — but I did not see many people pained by the loss of life on the Palestinian side,” Eldar told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Because we were so angry at Hamas, all the Israeli public wanted was to [expletive] Gaza. ... It wasn’t until after the incident of Dr. Abu al-Aish — the Gaza physician I spoke with on live TV immediately after a shell struck his house and caused the death of his daughters and he was shouting with grief and fear — that I discovered the [Israeli] silent majority that has compassion for people, including Palestinians. I found that many Israeli viewers shared my feelings.” So Eldar finished the documentary about how Mohammed’s life was saved in Israel.
His raw film reflects the Middle East I know — one full of amazing compassion, even among enemies, and breathtaking cruelty, even among neighbors.
I write about this now because there is something foul in the air. It is a trend, both deliberate and inadvertent, to delegitimize Israel — to turn it into a pariah state, particularly in the wake of the Gaza war. You hear the director Oliver Stone saying crazy things about how Hitler killed more Russians than Jews, but the Jews got all the attention because they dominate the news media and their lobby controls Washington. You hear Britain’s prime minister describing Gaza as a big Israeli “prison camp” and Turkey’s prime minister telling Israel’s president, “When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill.” You see singers canceling concerts in Tel Aviv. If you just landed from Mars, you might think that Israel is the only country that has killed civilians in war — never Hamas, never Hezbollah, never Turkey, never Iran, never Syria, never America.
I’m not here to defend Israel’s bad behavior. Just the opposite. I’ve long argued that Israel’s colonial settlements in the West Bank are suicidal for Israel as a Jewish democracy. I don’t think Israel’s friends can make that point often enough or loud enough.
But there are two kinds of criticism. Constructive criticism starts by making clear: “I know what world you are living in.” I know the Middle East is a place where Sunnis massacre Shiites in Iraq, Iran kills its own voters, Syria allegedly kills the prime minister next door, Turkey hammers the Kurds, and Hamas engages in indiscriminate shelling and refuses to recognize Israel. I know all of that. But Israel’s behavior, at times, only makes matters worse — for Palestinians and Israelis. If you convey to Israelis that you understand the world they’re living in, and then criticize, they’ll listen.
Destructive criticism closes Israeli ears. It says to Israelis: There is no context
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
that could explain your behavior, and your wrongs are so uniquely wrong that they overshadow all others. Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided — after Israel unilaterally left Gaza — to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too. Destructive criticism only empowers the most destructive elements in Israel to argue that nothing Israel does matters, so why change?
How about everybody take a deep breath, pop a copy of “Precious Life” into your DVD players, watch this documentary about the real Middle East, and if you still want to be a critic (as I do), be a constructive one. A lot more Israelis and Palestinians will listen to you.
I just received this from Storahtelling's Amichai Lau-Lavie's link to Jewcy which is hosting his PREPENT 5771: a 40 day virtual journey in preparation for the High and Holy Days. I had to share it. Amichai, for those of you who have not met him yet (is there anyone left? He has really been out there get to know lot's of people!), is a unique individual who has given an altneu-spin to interpreting Torah. I think he is on to something here and I wanted to pass on his invitation to join the journey.
"How happy are you, on a scale of 1-10?"
Inevitably, this quiz pops up during check-in phone calls with my mother, thousands of miles away. You can't lie to mothers, it just doesn't work, so I often go for a safe six, which seems to be just good enough.
But is it? Yesterday I self-scored seven, but after we hung up I paused to ponder what would really help me score high enough that I not only make my mother smile, but honestly mean it.
I came up with a plan: PREPENT 5771, a 40-day self-reflection project, a journey/crash course/blog/conversation, off and online. PREPENT intends to give focus to those of us so easily distracted, to give those Days of Awe the biggest possibility of being Awesome.
This 40-day ‘self help' process is based on traditional Jewish methods for the annual period of repentance, but with my personal unorthodox twist: minus the guilt, and with belief in a Deity completely optional and open for discussion. It's great that this sacred system exists for us each year; an annual internal review board, the ultimate check-in call with Mom and Creator alike, and complete with a real deadline: The Day of Judgment, Yom Kippur. [This year on September 18th, 2010, the tenth day of the Tishrei , the first month of the new year, 5771.]
I like that it takes 40 days to travel within, towards the Day of At-one-ment, into this ritualized simulation of the trial for our lives. In some traditions this day is a dress rehearsal for our death - imagine this is the last day of your life - how would you live it? Some men wear white shroud-like garments as they fast, dead-like, determined to live more fully starting the next day. In some traditions, Shofars-- primal and piercing, begin to blow 40 days before Yom Kippur, wake up calls for the soul. Special songs are sung during these days, cooking begins for the holiday banquets, and rabbis write sermons. It's a time of reckoning, of lists and resolutions, of getting ready for feasting and fasting on the road to more happiness - and change.
This year, when the final blast is heard at the end of Yom Kippur, I want to know, and know deeply, that I pushed through to a higher happiness score. Ten on the Tenth Day. I want to begin this brave new year with more focus, more muscle, and less distraction. This year I will again be joined by friends, old and new, to co-lead the rituals that usher in the New Year in Downtown New York. Shofars will be blown, songs and prayers will be chanted, stories shared, tears shed, connections made. I want to be there; more grounded, more open, able to lead and be led, give and receive, fully present. It's going to take some work. I'm ready.
And I invite you to join the journey.
The PREPENT 5771 journey: 40 ways in 40 days to tip the scales toward happiness. Each day at Jewcy, I'll write short daily blog entries, complete with tasks and open questions, occasional songs and links, step by step into 5771. I want to think about what's lost, and what I pay attention to the least, and make lists of all sorts. We'll hit the (spiritual) gym together, check in with people, and take time out to focus, and to get inspired.
And you? Want to make your own lists, schedule check in time with someone (or with yourself?), or just journey along with me as we move towards the day of self-reckoning. We need friends for this sort of work. We can be each other's travel companion and witness - reminding each other why we do this work: to be happy, more helpful to each other, better human beings
"We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community is his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am restored to live cleanly. "
To live cleanly: This is my intention.
Amichai Lau-Lavie is the founder and executive director of Storahtelling, Inc. a NYC based production company promoting Judaic literacy and engagement through original performances and educational programs for multi-generational audiences. He is hailed by Time Out NY as 'Super Star of David' and 'iconoclastic mystic,' and as 'one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world' by the NY Jewish Week. Join him for alternative High Holiday Services at City Winery in Downtown NY. www.higholidays.com.
Numbers 24:2-5
(2) As Balaam looked up and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the spirit of God came upon him. (3) Taking up his theme, he said: Word of Balaam son of Beor, Word of the man whose eye is true, (4) Word of him who hears God’s speech, Who beholds visions from the Almighty, Prostrate, but with eyes unveiled: (5) How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel!
ach week, we in the Religious School begin our worship services with the students by singing the words from Numbers 24:5, “How good are your tents, Jacob, your dwellings, Israel!” These are the words that traditionally begin morning daily worship, said upon first entering a synagogue. The word “dwellings” might also be translated as “sanctuaries,” and it is fitting that we begin our prayers with words of appreciation for the space in which we will offer our prayers.
In their original context, in this week’s Torah portion, these words are spoken by the prophet Balaam, who has been hired to curse the Israelites by Balak, the king of Moab. Balak has seen the victories of the Israelites against other nations as they have traveled in the desert, and he fears that this soon will be the fate of his own kingdom. But Balaam finds himself only able to offer words of blessing, and it is these words of praise, first spoken by a non-Jew, that now are part of our daily liturgy.
When we teach our students about this prayer, we ask them to offer a compelling explanation for what we could possibly mean when we say the word “Israel” in this prayer. Some say that this prayer is a wish for the well-being of the people who live in Israel today, whether Jewish or not. Others note that the prayer also mentions Jacob and argue that this is a prayer for all of those descended from him — all Jews, everywhere. Still others observe that Jacob’s name was changed to Israel after wrestling with an angel, so this prayer is a reminder that we must grapple with the Divine when we pray.
This prayer has been a sort of “theme song” for our two congregational family trips to Israel, in July 2008 and this past December 2009 – January 2010. Shortly after arriving, we sang these words while standing on a hilltop in Jaffa, looking out on the city of Tel Aviv. I tried to imagine how all of the people living in every apartment complex and villa are trying to make a good and beautiful place for themselves and their families. A few days later, while visiting a mountaintop kibbutz overlooking the Lebanese border, I looked out towards the houses on the other side of the valley separating the two countries. I thought to myself, if only the people living on each side of the border could look to the other and offer words of blessing: How good, how beautiful, is the place where you live.
On our final night in Jerusalem, just before heading to the airport, we again sang these words while looking out at the Old City, divided into four quarters like the four chambers of the human heart. It is to this spot that we turn when we pray, reminding ourselves that the heartbeat of Jerusalem has kept the Jewish people alive throughout the centuries. Yet, here too is where Jesus walked and, some say, was resurrected; where Muhammad is reported to have ascended to heaven; for Christians and for Muslims, as for us, Jerusalem is the beating heart of a people.
We teach our students that there isn’t a single correct answer as to what we mean when we say “Israel” in these words. But I know that for me, I agree with all three of these answers. I am praying for the beautiful homes of the Jews, my people, my own ancestry. I am praying for the good homes of the people living in Israel, whatever their religion may be. And I am grappling with the Divine and wondering when will the time come that enemies will turn to one another and find themselves only able to offer words of blessing.
I have spent some time trying to say something about the events off the coast of Israel. And then my inbox showed me Daniel Gordis' latest column and I realized that nothing I could say would be as succinct and to the point. I cannot agree more with what he has to say, so I defer to him and post his column below. While I certainly invite comments here as always, I incled the link to his comments page so you can engage in the larger conversations with others who have read his column on his site (which is great).
An old high school friend, who's taken great exception to a couple of my most recentJerusalem Postcolumns, has been telling me of late on myFacebook pagehow out of touch with American Jewry I am. He let loose again today. Here's what he had to say:
Hey Danny....yet again a misguided Israeli political and military mission with regard to Gaza that American Jewry will be asked to stand by and support. All over the news Israel will be referred to as "the Jewish State" as worldwide condemnation will pour in. As a Jew I will be on the defensive despite the fact that I have no vote and no say in whatever the politicians in Israel decide. Again, you will no doubt ask for solidarity by Jewish folk worldwide and we will answer for Israeli decision-making. I love Israel as my religious base, but the policies do not reflect my peace loving values. I support Israel with bonds and donations and visits, but the thriving American Jewish experience is independent of it.
OK, there's a lot there, and most of it I won't respond to now. But this is one of those moments when I don't think we have the luxury of writing a column over days, printing it out and editing it, sleeping on it and editing it again. Too much is happening, and people are too hurting and too confused for something not to be said.
To be sure, there's much more that we don't know than we do. We'll learn a lot in the days and weeks to come. But we do know that this was a tragic day and an excruciatingly painful one in Israel. At the fruit market, and at the dry cleaners, I asked people working there how they were, and all I got was a sigh. And then, "Yom kasheh. A tough day. They're going to eat us alive."
They will, indeed, eat us alive. It's taken a full day for the Israeli government to say anything coherent at all, riots are breaking out in Israeli Arab towns, Israelis in Istanbul have been warned by the Foreign Ministry not to leave their hotel rooms, and the international community is raining down condemnation.
But I jump to conclusions very different than those of my high school friend, and I responded to him in language very close to this:
David - we couldn't disagree more strongly. Israel's actions were "misguided"? Let's take that first. Were there tragic outcomes? Obviously. But "misguided"? Gaza is under the malicious and cynical rule of a terror organization sworn on Israel's destruction, that is holding an Israeli soldier captive in contravention of all international treaties, and that oppresses its own population while even Palestinian witnesses there acknowledge that there is no food shortage. Given Hamas' military objectives, Israel would be crazy not to check what's going in. But Israel had already pledged to pass on any humanitarian goods after they were inspected, and told the boats the same thing. So, no, I don't think that the idea of stopping the boats was misguided.
What we know is that on five of the ships, the commandos (among them friends of our kids, by the way) boarded the boats, and there was no resistance and no fighting.
On one boat, however, the first soldiers to land on the boat were attacked with metal rods and knives. There's video of it. It's playing all over Israeli and all over the internet. In some cases, soldiers' weapons were stolen and used against them. One was stabbed, apparently in the abdomen. Another was tossed from a desk and trampled when he landed. There were a handful of commandos there, and 600 "peace activists." On Israeli news tonight, the soldiers on helicopters taking them to the hospital were interviewed. They descended the ropes, they said, planning to talk the "activists" into going to Ashdod. Their weapons were not in their hands, but strapped to their backs. "We went into war," one in his 30's said bitterly tonight, "and all we had were toys." They were beaten, trampled, shot (yes, there were bullet injuries) but only after forty minutes of combat did they resort to live five. They were going to get lynched if they didn't fight back, they said.
Was I there? No. Do I know what really happened? No. But do I trust these kids and their officers? Yes, I do.
As for "peace activists," David, how much do you know about the IHH? It's a terror support group, supported by Turkey (among others) and it was ent to provoke. If they just wanted the goods to get to Gaza, they could have agreed to transfer them to an Israeli ship, or to unload them in Ashdod, as the Navy personnel asked them to. But they didn't want that.
They just wanted to break the blockade. Why? For food? Even a few Palestinian journalists with some guts are reporting that there's no humanitarian food crisis in Gaza. No, it wasn't about food. They want the blockade broken so that after that, non-humanitarian items (read weapons) could brought in. Why should Israel allow that? So that they can be better armed the next time we have to send our kids into Gaza?
As for "being on the defensive," you "will be on the defensive" only because you totally don't get it. For if you did get it, you wouldn't feel that way. There's only one country anywhere on the planet about which there's a conversation about whether it has a right to exist. Do you ever think about why that is? What, the fate of the Palestinians is worse than that of aborigines in Australia? Or people in the Congo, or Rwanda? Why all the attention on Israel? Do you really not get it? You think that New Zealand just coincidentally decided this week to make kosher slaughtering illegal? You think it's really about humanitarian commitments? Come on.
No, David, you really don't have to defend Israel. No one's asking you to. We know that it's too late to expect many Americans like you to assume we're right before you assume we're wrong. As we look out at Jews across the world, we're just assessing who gets Jewish history, and who's so thoroughly intellectually assimilated that they're actually embarrassed that that Jews don't have to continue to be victims. I'm horrified by what happened on the ship, and I'll be shocked if after all is in, we find that Israel made no mistakes. (This was pretty clearly an intelligence failure, at the very minimum, sending those soldiers into something for which they had not at all been prepared or armed.) But if that had been my kid on the ship, and he'd gone in to prevent the blockade from being broken, but had no intention of fighting, and had then been attacked, I'd want him to defend himself. No matter what. I'd want him to come home whole, because that's part of the new Jewish reality that this country is supposed to make possible.
The loss of life is tragic. So are the injuries to soldiers, including serious head wounds. But most tragic of all is that the world is so willing to be blinded to what's really going on here.
At the end of this excruciating day in Israel, at least given what I know at this moment, I'm saddened but not apologetic. I'm not surprised by most of the world's reactions. But I haven't lost sight of who provoked this, and why they did that. But you're a very smart guy. Why have you?
At a CAJE conference long, long ago at a campus far, far away, I gave a session about using the principles of Seth Godin's Purple Cow and Unleashing the Ideavirusbooks to re-frame our work as educators and institutional leaders. It was well-received, but I think the time has come to continue the discussion. So what I offer is a video and transcript of Seth Godin teaching about what it means to have your product stand out. As I mentioned at that conference, it took Moses from among all the other shepherds of Midian to notice not that the bush was burning, but that the branches were not being consumed by the flames. Most of us and our constituents are NOT as observant as Moses. We only see a bush on fire. Nothing remarkable about that in the wilderness.
And I have some questions I hope you will attempt to answer in the comments section below:
Whose attention do we need to attract? Children? Their parents? Adult Learners? People who are not members of the congregation or institution? The Usual Suspects?
What are their needs, in terms of what will get their attention? What are the barriers that prevent them from noticing that the bush is burning unconsumed?
What can we do with the settings and structures we have to make Jewish learning remarkable?
What can we do that goes outside or beyond those settings and structures to make Jewish learning remarkable?
From TED February 2003
In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.
I'm going to give you four specific examples -- and I'm going to cover at the end -- about how a company called Silk tripled their sales by doing one thing. How an artist named Jeff Koons went from being a nobody to making a whole bunch of money and having a lot of impact, to how Frank Gehry redefined what it meant to be an architect. And one of my biggest failures as a marketer in the last few years, a record label I started that had a CD called "Sauce."
Before I can do that I've got to tell you about sliced bread, and a guy named Otto Rohwedder. Now, before sliced bread was invented in the 1910s I wonder what they said? Like the greatest invention since ... the telegraph or something. But this guy named Otto Rohwedder invented sliced bread, and he focused, like most inventors did, on the patent part and the making part. And the thing about the invention of sliced bread is this -- that for the first 15 years after sliced bread was available no one bought it, no one knew about it. It was a complete and total failure. And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread, like the success of almost everything we've been talking about at this conference, is not always about what the patent is like, or what the factory is like, it's about can you get your idea to spread, or not. And I think that the way that you're going to get what you want, or cause the change that you want to change, to happen, is that you've got to figure out a way to get your ideas to spread.
And it doesn't matter to me whether you're running a coffee shop or you're an intellectual, or you're in business, or you're flying hot air balloons. I think that all this stuff applies to everybody regardless of what we do. That what we are living in is a century of idea diffusion. That people who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win. And when I talk about it I usually pick business because they make the best pictures that you can put in your presentation, and because it's the easiest sort of way to keep score. But I want you to forgive me when I use these examples because I'm talking about anything that you decide to spend your time to do.
At the heart of spreading ideas is TV and stuff like TV. TV and mass media made it really easy to spread ideas in a certain way. I call it the TV industrial complex. The way the TV industrial complex works, is you buy some ads -- interrupt some people -- that gets you distribution. You use the distribution you get to sell more products. You take the profit from that to buy more ads. And it goes around and around and around, the same way that military and industrial complex worked a long time ago. And that model of, and we heard it yesterday, if we could only get onto the homepage of Google, if we could only figure out how to get promoted there, if we could only figure out how to grab that person by the throat, and tell them about what we want to do. If we do that then everyone would pay attention, and we would win. Well, this TV industrial complex informed my entire childhood and probably yours. I mean, all of these products succeeded because someone figured out how to touch people in a way they weren't expecting, in a way they didn't necessarily want with an ad, over and over and over again until they bought it.
And the thing that's happened is, they canceled the TV industrial complex. That just over the last few years, what anybody who markets anything has discovered is that it's not working the way that it used to. This picture is really fuzzy, I apologize, I had a bad cold when I took it. But the product in the blue box in the center is my poster child. Right. I go to the deli, I'm sick, I need to buy some medicine. The brand manager for that blue product spent 100 million dollars trying to interrupt me in one year. 100 million dollars interrupting me with TV commercials and magazine ads and spam and coupons and shelving allowances and spiff -- all so I could ignore every single message. And I ignored every message because I don't have a pain reliever problem. I buy the stuff in the yellow box because I always have. And I'm not going to invest a minute of my time to solve her problem, because I don't care.
Here's a magazine called Hydrate. It's 180 pages about water.
(Laughter)
Right. Articles about water, ads about water. Imagine what the world was like 40 years ago when it was just the Saturday Evening Post and Time and Newsweek. Now there are magazines about water. New products from Coke Japan -- water salad.
(Laughter)
OK. Coke Japan comes out with a new product every three weeks. Because they have no idea what's going to work and what's not. I couldn't have written this better myself. It came out four days ago -- I circled the important parts so you can see them here. They've came out ... Arby's is going to spend 85 million dollars promoting an oven mitt with the voice of Tom Arnold, hoping that that will get people to go to Arby's and buy a roast beef sandwich.
(Laughter)
Now, I had tried to imagine what could possibly be in an animated TV commercial featuring Tom Arnold, that would get you to get in your car, drive across town and buy a roast beef sandwich.
(Laughter)
Now, this is Copernicus, and he was right, when he was talking to anyone who needs to hear your idea. The world revolves around me. Me, me, me, me, me. My favorite person -- me. I don't want to get email from anybody, I want to get "memail."
(Laughter)
So consumers, and I don't just mean people who buy stuff at the Safeway, I mean people at the Defense Department who might buy something, or people at, you know, the New Yorker who might print your article. Consumers don't care about you at all, they just don't care. Part of the reason is -- they've got way more choices than they used to, and way less time. And in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff. And my parable here is you're driving down the road and you see a cow, and you keep driving because you've seen cows before. Cows are invisible. Cows are boring. Who's going to stop and pull over and say -- oh, look, a cow. Nobody.
(Laughter)
But if the cow was purple -- isn't that a great special effect? I could do that again if you want it. If the cow was purple, you'd notice it for a while. I mean, if all cows were purple you'd get bored with those, too. The thing that's going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built, is -- is it remarkable? And remarkable's a really cool word because we think it just means neat, but it also means -- worth making a remark about. And that is the essence of where idea diffusion is going. That two of the hottest cars in the United States is a 55,000 dollar giant car, big enough to hold a mini in its trunk. People are paying full price for both, and the only thing they have in common is that they don't have anything in common.
(Laughter)
Every week the number one best selling DVD in America changes. It's never "The Godfather," it's never "Citizen Kane," It's always some third rate movie with some second rate star. But the reason it's number one is because that's the week it came out. Because it's new, because it's fresh. Because people saw it and said -- I didn't know that was there -- and they noticed it. Two of the big success stories of the last 20 years in retail -- one sells things that are super-expensive in a blue box, and one sells things that are as cheap as they can make them. The only thing they have in common is that they're different.
We're now in the fashion business, no matter what we do for a living, we're in the fashion business. And the thing is, people in the fashion business know what it's like to be in the fashion business, because they're used to it. The rest of us have to figure out how to think that way. How to understand that it's not about interrupting people with big full-page ads, or insisting on meetings with people. But it's a totally different sort of process that determines which ideas spread, and which ones don't. This chair -- they sold a billion dollars' worth of Aeron chairs by reinventing what it meant to sell a chair. They turned a chair from something the purchasing department bought, to something that was a status symbol about where you sat at work. This guy, Lionel Poilane, the most famous baker in the world -- he died two and a half months ago, and he was a hero of mine and a dear friend. He lived in Paris. Last year he sold 10 million dollars worth of French bread. Every loaf baked in a bakery he owned, by one baker at a time, in a wood-fired oven. And when Lionel started his bakery the French pooh-pooh-ed it. They didn't want to buy his bread. It didn't look like "French bread." It wasn't what they expected. It was neat, it was remarkable, and slowly it spread from one person to another person until finally, it became the official bread of three-star restaurants in Paris. Now he's in London, and he ships by FedEx all around the world.
What marketers used to do is make average products for average people. That's what mass marketing is. Smooth out the edges, go for the center, that's the big market. They would ignore the geeks, and God forbid, the laggards. It was all about going for the center. But in a world where the TV industrial complex is broken, I don't think that's a strategy we want to use any more. I think the strategy we want to use is to not market to these people because they're really good at ignoring you. But market to these people because they care. These are the people who are obsessed with something. And when you talk to them they'll listen because they like listening -- it's about them. And if you're lucky, they'll tell their friends on the rest of the curve, and it'll spread. It'll spread to the entire curve.
They have something I call otaku -- it's a great Japanese word. It describes the desire of someone who's obsessed to say, drive across Tokyo to try a new ramen noodle place, because that's what they do. They get obsessed with it. To make a product, to market an idea, to come up with any problem you want to solve that doesn't have a constituency with an otaku, is almost impossible. Instead, you have to find a group that really, desperately cares about what it is you have to say. Talk to them and make it easy for them to tell their friends. There's a hot sauce otaku, but there's no mustard otaku. That's why there's lots and lots and lots of kinds of hot sauces, and not so many kinds of mustard. Not because it's hard to make interesting mustard -- you can make interesting mustard -- But people don't because no one's obsessed with it, and thus no one tells their friends. Krispy Kreme has figured this whole thing out. Krispy Kreme has a strategy, and what they do is, they enter a city, they talk to the people with otaku, and then they spread through the city to the people who've just crossed the street.
This yoyo right here cost 112 dollars, but it sleeps for 12 minutes. Not everybody wants it but they don't care. They want to talk to the people who do, and maybe it'll spread.
These guys make the loudest car stereo in the world.
(Laughter)
It's as loud as a 747 jet, you can't get in the car's got bullet proof glass on the windows because they'll blow out the windshield otherwise. But the fact remains that when someone wants to put a couple of speakers in their car, if they've got the otaku or they've heard from someone who does, they go ahead and they pick this.
It's really simple -- you sell to the people who are listening, and maybe, just maybe those people tell their friends. So when Steve Jobs talks to 50,000 people at his keynote, right, who are all tuned in from 130 countries watching his two-hour commercial -- that's the only thing keeping his company in business -- is that those 50,000 people care desperately enough to watch a two-hour commercial, and then tell their friends.
Pearl Jam, 96 albums released in the last two years. Every one made a profit. How? They only sell them on their website. Those people who buy them on the website have the otaku, and then they tell their friends, and it spreads and it spreads.
This hospital crib cost 10,000 dollars, 10 times the standard. But hospitals are buying it faster than any other model. Hard Candy nail polish, doesn't appeal to everybody, but to the people who love it, they talk about it like crazy.
This paint can right here saved the Dutch Boy paint company, making them a fortune. It costs 35 percent more than regular paint because Dutch Boy made a can that people talk about, because it's remarkable. They didn't just slap a new ad on the product, they changed what it meant to build a paint product.
AmIhotornot.com -- every day 250,000 people go to this site, run by two volunteers, and I can tell you they are hard graders, and
(Laughter)
they didn't get this way by advertising a lot. They got this way by being remarkable, sometimes a little TOO remarkable.
And this picture frame has a cord going out the back, and you plug it into the wall. My father has this on his desk, and he sees his grandchildren every day, changing constantly. And every single person who walks into his office hears the whole story of how this thing ended up on his desk. And one person at a time, the idea spreads.
These are not diamonds, not really. They're made from cremains. After you're cremated you can have yourself made into a gem.
(Laughter)
Oh, you like my ring? It's my grandmother.
(Laughter)
Fastest-growing business in the whole mortuary industry. But you don't have to be Ozzie Osborne -- you don't have to be super-outrageous to do this. What you have to do is figure out what people really want and give it to them.
A couple of quick rules to wrap up. The first one is: Design is free when you get to scale. And the people who come up with stuff that's remarkable more often than not figure out how to put design to work for them.
Number two: The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe. Proctor and Gamble knows this, right? The whole model of being Proctor and Gamble is always about average products for average people. That's risky. The safe thing to do now is to be at the fringes, be remarkable.
And being very good is one of the worst things you can possibly do. Very good is boring. Very good is average. It doesn't matter whether you're making a record album, or you're an architect, or you have a tract on sociology. If it's very good, it's not going to work, because no one's going to notice it.
So my three stories. Silk. Put a product that does not need to be in the refrigerated section next to the milk in the refrigerated section. Sales tripled. Why? Milk, milk, milk, milk, milk -- not milk. For the people who were there and looking at that section, it was remarkable. They didn't triple their sales with advertising, they tripled it by doing something remarkable.
That is a remarkable piece of art. You don't have to like it, but a 40-foot tall dog made out of bushes in the middle of New York City is remarkable.
Frank Gehry didn't just change a museum, he changed an entire city's economy by designing one building that people from all over the world went to see. Now, at countless meetings at, you know, the Portland City Council, or who knows where, they said, we need an architect -- can we get Frank Gehry? Because he did something that was at the fringes.
And my big failure? I came out with an entire
(Music)
record album and hopefully a whole bunch of record albums in SACD format -- this remarkable new format -- and I marketed it straight to people with 20,000 dollar stereos. People with 20,000 dollar stereos don't like new music.
(Laughter)
So what you need to do is figure out who does care. Who is going to raise their hand and say, "I want to hear what you're doing next," and sell something to them. The last example I want to give you. This is a map of Soap Lake, Washington. As you can see, if that's nowhere, it's in the middle of it.
(Laughter)
But they do have a lake. And people used to come from miles around to swim in the lake. They don't anymore. So the founding fathers said, "We've got some money to spend. What can we build here?" And like most committees, they were going to build something pretty safe. And then an artist came to them -- this is a true artist's rendering -- he wants to build a 55-foot tall lava lamp in the center of town. That's a purple cow, that's something worth noticing. I don't know about you but if they build it, that's where I'm going to go.
, editor W. Gunther Plaut (NY: URJ Press, 2005). Used by permission of URJ Press, 
and 
books to re-frame our work as educators and institutional leaders. It was well-received, but I think the time has come to continue the discussion. So what I offer is a video and transcript of Seth Godin teaching about what it means to have your product stand out. As I mentioned at that conference, it took Moses from among all the other shepherds of Midian to notice not that the bush was burning, but that the branches were not being consumed by the flames. Most of us and our constituents are NOT as observant as Moses. We only see a bush on fire. Nothing remarkable about that in the wilderness.