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Why Jewish Education Fails

Tobie and I were recently swapping war stories from our high school days with our friend Elisheva who went to high school in an Israeli ulpana - which is, for those who don't know, an Israeli daati-leumi high school for girls, frequently but not always including a dormitory (in her case it did) - and I have to say she held her own pretty well. Which is impressive, but also more frustrating than anything else, since high school education in this country is my chosen profession.
(side note - if you find the term "war stories" inappropriate you have never attended a Jewish school, for I assure you these institutions are indeed the sites of daily battles between the students who try desperately to establish some sense of self, and the teachers who are constantly and senselessly trying to crush them.)
As the years go on, I find myself more and more offended as a person and as a Jew by people who claim to be Torah educators. A prime example is this courtesy of Chana. Chana does a pretty good job of eviscerating this speech, so I won't do it again here, but it really has come to a point where something needs to be done.
When did it become ok to make turning people trying to establish an intellectual dialogue into a joke? Why are we trying to squash every piece of intelligence, personality, scholarly striving, why have we made these things things which need to be removed from the community? Why does Rabbi Orlofsky have to make fun of a girl who is trying to get some sound halachik opinions on an issue that is important to her? Which by the way she did not get. What she got was a lot of nonsense from a "Rabbi" who does not know his sources and moreover DOESN'T CARE that he doesn't know his sources but beyond even that, DOES NOT CARE TO KNOW THE SOURCES. And does not feel that Jewish soul striving for some clarity has just been eternally damaged by his so called "sense-oh-humor." Respected members of our communities, people who we pay lots and lots of money to educate us, people who are held up as examples of middot and learning and the Jewish ideology personified deal callously, casually, without respect, knowledge, wisdom, or even a grain of common sense with children who genuinely want to know things all the time, and then they turn around and claim that there's a crisis with kids who are "going off the derech" and they just don't know why or how it happened.
To be perfectly honest, I look back on the things that I and many friends of mine put up with all the time from these people and it is a miracle to me that we remained religious at all. Thank G-d for all that arrogance they accused us of having, it actually saved our relationships with G-d, can you imagine? I knew there had to be a reason He created that one.
Anyway, clearly all I can do at the moment is rant on a voiceless blog with almost no readers, but this has to be said in a public forum and this is the only one I have:
These people are ruining our children. They're hypocrites and liars and the worst thing of all is that they don't know anything and they encourage more people to not know anything. That's how you manipulate mobs - by discouraging individuality, discouraging learning, discouraging any form of achievement, and being laitzanim about the people who actually care about these things. Just in case you weren't clear, I'll say it one more time - Jewish schools are ruining Jewish children, and they will be the ruin of the Jewish communities. It's not assimilation this time around guys - Sharansky had it wrong. We're self-destructing from the inside out. And the disturbing thing is, that seems to be just fine with all the people who claim that they care.

An excerpt.

Tobie and I are in the process of writing a novel. How far along with it we will get remains to be seen. The fundamental storyline is that of a young Jewish girl and her search for a shidduch. Told in the language and style of Jane Austen. :) We're having quite a bit of fun with it.

Originally, we were having difficulties getting the dialogue properly Austenian, so we wrote it more or less colloqially. We have mostly translated the dialogue into Austenian at this point, but the original is fun in its own right, so we thought we'd print it here for you're viewing enjoyment.

Character Sheet:
Shoshana Friedman- (21) Heroine. Bais Yakkov lichol dvar viinyan, with an unfortunate congenital tendency towards thinking. Works as a teacher at the local girls’ high school, and is assistant producer for the school production.
Batya Friedman Glass - (23)married older sister with a six month old girl (Hadar); accountant; daati leumi, lives in the neighborhood.
Benny Glass- (26)husband of Batya father of Hadar; patent lawyer.
Avi Friedman - (24) Oldest child; learning full time at a very prestigious local yeshiva/college program, getting a degree in education.
Ariella Friedman- (16) Youngest child. Social and peripherally intellectual rebel; insane; goes by “Spike.’ (Playing Reb Yid in the school production “Hidden Majesty.”) Wears all black when not in uniform.
Motti Scheinberg- (24)Son of the head of a prestigious kollel for marred guys and is head of an important regional hechsher out of town; Avi’s chavrusa and best friend, eats at their house all the time (ben bayit.)
Devorah Samber - (21) Shoshana’s best friend; secretary at same high school. Has brother with Downs’ Syndrome.
Joe/Yosef Friedman- (54) Father to everyone else named Friedman except for his wife. Baal teshuva, spiritual, into gematrias; floaty.
Estelle/Esther Friedman - (55) Mother to everyone else named Friedman except for her husband. Baalat teshuva,; more young Israel oriented except she never goes to shul ; not so into the whole thing bichlal, kinda just goes with the flow.



The Adventures of Shoshanna Friedman, Chapter 1:
The men returned from shul that Friday night to find Batya and Shoshana in the midst of one of their habitual debates. Batya and her husband Benny had just begun a chavrusa with the new daf yomi cycle; about which Shoshanna found it difficult to mask her disapprobation.
Batya was sweeping in from the kitchen with a stack of plates to set the table. “First of all - first of all- it’s crazy fun, and extremely intellectually stimulating, and yes, I do connect to Hashem through my mind. Second of all, when was the last time you asked Avi whether or not he finds the gemarrah thing spiritually fulfilling? Third, since when do we measure the significance of a mitzvah by its spiritual fulfillment? Do you feel spiritually fulfilled when you’re on your hands and knees scrubbing under the refrigerator two weeks before Pesach?”
“Actually,” Shoshana responded as she chopped vegetables in the kitchen, “I’ve always kind of connected to cleaning for Pesach; you know, because it’s getting rid of the chumetz shebieesa which is the yetzer hora. It’s like Yom Kippur really.”
“Yeah,” Batya retorted, gesticulating with a fish fork, “and for me, gemarrah is like, you know, Torah, which is all holy and stuff.”
Avi, who was lounging against the doorframe and watching the by-play amusedly, jumped in with “But what about ‘kol hamilamed bito torah kiilu milamdah tiflus?”
“These words of Talmud! They burn my ears!” muttered Spike as she wandered by with the challah board.
“Actually,” Motti interjected as he wandered by on his way to pick a sefer off a shelf, “ in context of the sugyah in Sotah, it’s takkeh not the best rayeh- “
“Ayn hachi nami, but if you look at the rishoynim…” here the boys faded off into the living room, already immersed in their own argument. Batya and Shoshana blinked and turned back to their discussion.
“Of course it’s Torah,” Shoshana admitted, “it’s just not so shayich for a women’s tafkid, you know? It’s mammesh another mindset-”
“Says the woman who’s never looked at a daf,” Batya grinned.
“The gedoylim have learned more than enough dafs to make that decision for us!” Shoshanna protested.
“Yeah and they know a woman’s mindset if anyone does,” Spike smirked, wandering out with the Kiddush cups.
“Have you girls finished setting the table yet?” Mrs. Friedman called from the kitchen. “All this yelling between rooms is really not making my headache any better. Are we ready to start?”
“Just about done Ma,” said Batya. “Should I get the boys?”
“Yes call them. Where’s the baby?”
“Upstairs sleeping. Benny went to go check on her when he came in; I’ll go up and get them.”
“Ok, you do that, Shoshana can call the boys from the living room.”
Shoshana entered the living room where Avi and Motti were now poring over a Rash in Masechet Sotah, three other huge sefarim lying open on the table. “We’re ready for Shalom Aleichem, Avi. Where’s Tatti?”
Avi glanced up and reoriented himself with the living room. “Um, still outside?”
“He ran into Reb Leibl on the corner, and they started talking gematriah. You know how they get,” said Motti, glancing up at Shoshanna as he finished the sentence with a shy smile. Shoshanna smiled back but her middos were too good to allow for eye rolling. Just as she was formulating a sentence in her head that was polite and acknowledged the humor of the situation without being bold enough to be perceived as too forward and also duly respectful of her father, she was saved from the mental gymnastics by her father himself blowing in the front door that moment.
“Esther!” he called out as he came in, “Reb leibl just told me the most wonderful gematriah from this week’s haftorah -”
“Yosef, we’re just ready for Sholom Aleichem. Come to the table.” his wife responded.
The slow movement of many people towards a table began as Batya and Benny were descending the stairs with baby Hadar.
“Benny, can I ask you a question?” Batya was saying. “Have you found my feeble female intelligence an obstacle to any hope of intellectual equality in our chavrusa experience?”
“Yes, dear,” Benny responded, wiping some spit-up off of hadar’s six month old chin.
“Benny!”
“Truthfully,” in a more sober voice as he turned to face his wife, “not only in our chavrusa experience, but in the rest of our marriage as well. But don’t trouble your pretty little head about it.”
“Give me my baby,” Batya demanded.
Avi chimed in from the living room, not lifting his eyes from the sefer which he was bringing to the table with him, “Takeh, it’s not such a clear inyan. There are mamesh differences between men and women you know, it’s not just a spiritual thing, even science agrees.”
“It’s been medically proven and everything,” Spike contributed cheerfully. Motti grinned.
“And everything,” he added.
During this exchange, husband and wife Friedman were communicating via eye signals. Mrs. Friedman was saying “Nu? Table!” And Mr. Friedman responded, “I’m trying! Kids will be kids.”
At which point, he tentatively began a “Sho-lom- a-lei-chem- “ only to be interrupted by Batya
“- and if torah shebaal peh is off limits, why are you learning rashi? He brings gemarrahs all the time!”
“Batya, you know that’s not the same thing!” Shoshanna protested and Motti jumped in to agree.
“Rashi does bring gemarrahs, but it’s hardly the same style of learning as looking at a daf.”
“ Because, you know, it’s not one,” Spike expounded.
Mr. Friedman tried once again to begin shalom Aleichem, but didn’t get past the first syllable before Batya burst out with - “Style shmyle, you’re just figuring out what people are saying! It’s not like the difference of style make the learning that much harder -”
“Are you saying you learn daf the same way you learn Rashi?” Avi interrupted.
“No, I’m saying that women aren’t dumb. Why would you want to marry someone who you assumed was less intelligent than you are?”
“So maybe intelligence isn’t the most important quality in a wife?”
Batya went thin lipped and mimed stabbing Avi with a spoon.
“Of course intelligence is important,” Shoshanna remarked, “but middos are at least as important.”
Here Mr. Friedman, who was hungry, belted out his last effort at shalom Aleichem in a tone that would brook no resistance, and Avi and Motti fell in line. Discussion ceased until after washing, except for a remark from Spike on the way to the sink (“I know I look for both intelligence and middos in all of my women,”) which was silenced by a poke in the back from her mother.

A preview. Let me know what you think.

Phillip Update

For all of you who remember Phillip, my father's pet plastic bag, I'd like to inform you all that he is alive and well, happily neurotic in his hatbox of a home. For those of you who don't remember or don't know, see here and here.

I was inspired to think of Phillip this evening/morning (depending which end of the bedtime you're on; my mother, sister, brother, and I were still wide awake and fully functioning when my Dad strolled down to the kitchen for breakfast at 3:20 a.m. He's nervous about making it on time to the vasikin minyan - he takes the Judgement Day very seriously,) when my father mentioned casually that the turkey sitting sadly in our kitchen sink waiting to be stuffed had been named Ratliffe. In reaction to this, the story continued, my Mother had named a local gnat. On inquiry as to the specific moniker, he responded "Nat," which he considered rather clever, and was appropriately appreciative. This resulted in a couple of minutes of "Who's on first?"-like explanation, and then he briefly considered naming two dead flies. When he couldn't come up with anything better than Dead and Deader, we let the conversation slip and he wandered off to bed. I mentioned this conversation to my Mom later, and she told me that in fact she had named the gnat "Gnat" and not "Nat," and that she was being sarcastic, not cute. We then continued with the baking.

The above paragraph more or less sums up my family life. Happy honeying to all!

Musings on Mortality

Hello, people who are still out there.

I'm flying back to Chicago tomorrow, and as usual this event has brought on another bout of depression and unhealthy obsessing over the apocalypse and mortality in general. You might wonder why traveling does this to me; and there are a number of reasons, most of them due to intensely high stress levels, and a shortage of both sleep and proper nutrition. In any case, I freaked myself out pretty bad the other night. I was trying to sleep (not entirely sober, I suppose I ought to mention) and all I could think of was the many many ways in which it is possible to die, or even worse, to not-die.

A couple of months ago, while trying not to study for something, I came upon a video of one man telling about his "near-death experience." He was Israeli, and at the time of the events of his story, he was completely secular. By the time he's telling the story he's completely chareidi - long beard, black hat and coat, the whole thing. I think he might have been a chossid, but I don't remember where to find the video. Anyway he was describing all this stuff he saw and went through in Heaven, and it was reasonably convincing until he got to the part about all his spilled seed calling him a murderer. That was where I went skeptical. So Tobie and I discussed it a bit afterwards, and in her opinion, "near death experiences" are mostly brain cells misfiring as they slowly begin to expire. Which made me wonder a lot of scary things. People who are in comas for extended periods of time, are they having those kinds of experiences in their heads during all that time? What about people who aren't exactly brain dead, like they're technically awake, but mentally vacant, like old people in nursing homes? And then I thought, how awful must it be to be conscious, but incapable of doing or saying anything, completely dependent and at the mercy of those around you? And I realized that most people who live to a ripe old age end up in one or another of these kinds of experiences eventually, no one really ends happily; I mean, forget dying in a nuclear blast, or worse as a survivor in a post-nuclear world, or at the tortuous hands of some enemy who only wants to cause as much pain as possible during the killing process- nobody dies happily. And it really really scared me. I'm not saying it here as vividly, as viscerally as I felt it at the time, but I came really close to having a major anxiety attack. I managed to talk myself down, but was actually worried that I might not be able to. It was almost enough to make me believe in G-d again. I really really wanted to; I swear I really tried. But I am not capable of choosing what to believe in, and it didn't work. It was the first time I understood to any extent what it means to consider ending one's own life as a serious possibility. Luckily my terror of death will probably always rescue me from that.

Anyway, those are some pre-Rosh Hashanna thoughts for all of you. I do sincerely wish you all a good year, filled with health and success and good things. I hope these things come to all of you, and more importantly, that they stay.

Facebook: the Ongoing Narrative

There are people in this world who are opposed to facebook. Not
because they're chareidi; because they're kind of anti-technology. Not
exactly of course, but you know what I mean - everyone has a friend
who refuses to get a facebook account for no particularly good reason.
And for those people, I'd like to say something about the facebook
phenomenon, and why I am a fan.
my facebook account was originally activated by a friend of mine, who
insisted on my getting one to keep in touch with. At first, I
regarded it as another technological obligation, and an annoyance.
Then I discovered what so many others do; that it's a wonderful way to
waste time. But even so, I kept myself to certain standards - I ignored
most activations and applications, actually used the damn thing to
keep in touch with people, and, one of my personal facebook prides: I
have no friends on facebook that I did not actually know at some point
in time in real life.
Now as the phenomenon grew, more and more people had facebook and were
getting in touch with me as well - people from elementary school, high
school, camp, seminary, and pretty much every other significant period
in my life- the fact that I actually knew everyone on my friend list
became mildly impressive to me, and I'll tell you why: I got to finish
a lot of stories.
Here's what I mean.
Daily life is an ongoing narrative, that other people walk in and out
of. We all know pretty nearly everything about our own narrative up to
the current point, and those of the few people we see and talk to
everyday and are generally close with. But then there are those people
that you were only friends with for a brief period of time. You might
have been quite god and sincere friends at the time, but now barely
speak. Say you know someone for maybe a year or two. If it's a close
friend, you get a good piece of that person's narrative up til the
point you met them - major life events, basic family details, that
kind of thing. And obviously, you're there for that piece of her/his
progression, so you know what goes on in that piece of the narrative.
But after you two part ways, you do different things, lose contact a
bit. Five years later you get nostalgic and think "Huh, I wonder what
happened next? I wonder what's up with him/her now?"
That's where facebook comes in. By being in touch with people on
facebook, you get to track their narrative in the bits and pieces they
let slip out in daily or weekly increments. Of course, most of the
really interesting details you can only guess at - especially if it's
one of those people you really never talk to, even on facebook. But
there are hints if you know how to read them. And then, the major life
events - engagements and marriages, births and aliyahs and other big
deals- generally are published biphairush. I davka like it more this
way about the people I never talk to. I like being able to follow
their narrative even without talking to them. Cuz I know that they
don't really want to talk to me, and I don't really want to talk to
them - but curiosity over the development of the human drama keeps us
tuned in to each others lives even from a distance. And there's
something oddly nice about that. Maybe something creepy too, if you
think about it too hard. But my fascination with stories, especially
real-life ones about people I know, can't really help but exult in
this. I suppose it is every good storyteller's dream come true; a
treasure trove of material right at your fingertips.The sheer weight
of all that human information is dizzying - kind of like get the feeling you get when walking into a
well-stocked used bookstore.
Anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is, that I love knowing how the
story ends. Obviously, we can't really know how most of them end for
years and years to come. But I like seeing the progression. There's something strangely satisfying in it.

Comedia dell'arte

Is this, in case you were wondering.

In case anyone is interested.
I went to an Israeli one tonight. The plot centered around a Yeshiva and a theater that were located on the same street. The Rav's wife is in a constant battle with the manager? I guess of the theater - classic chiloni/chareidi conflict. In order to keep some actors from entering the city and performing at the theater, the rabbanit decides to marry off her talmud chacham son to a girl of means; meanwhile he is madly in love with a local freicha. These are the bare bones of the plot, but there are other complications and hilarity ensues. Generally.

It was fascinating to see this centuries old form used in a modern Israeli setting. Of course I love satire in general, and especially on Jewish stuff, but even so, I felt that it was a peculiarly interesting format for this particular kind of a story. The physical comedy could be a little over the top, and obviously elements of the story were caricaturized out of reality, but even so I felt that it was a genuinely fresh and unique idea artistically. Anyway, just thought I'd share that.