Teaching Dogma

So I was browsing around the internet in between bursts of practicing Yiddish vocab words for my quiz later today, and I was reading about a Hebrew school teacher's difficulty with another teacher teaching her/his students Jewish stuff that totally clashes with that community's ideology, and how one kid really latched onto the stuff in ways that were a little scary- like small-child producing hard-core misogyny scary.

And it reminded me of a discussion I led at work a month or so ago (so a 5th grade class at a Reform shul), introducing Rtzeh, starting with the historical background of the prayer, starting from Temple sacrifices. (yes, I cleared this with my boss, the lead educator for the grade first- she was all for it: she's also a Brandeis alumna, and I can see that effect All Over her lesson plans: it's really interesting to watch Professor Kimelman info trickle down to my 5th graders.) So I took the conversation and after explaining that this prayer, or rather an earlier variant thereof was what was said after a sacrifice was offered (not interested in getting into the discrepancy between reality and rabbinic imaginings thereof with the kids now- not yet), and talked about that the Temple was destroyed, and why, and what we think about that. And then we talked about why it hasn't been rebuilt, and why would we want it to be rebuilt or not want it to be rebuilt. And a bunch of my very Reform 5th graders were pretty into the idea of rebuilding the Temple so we could get back to killing animals for G-d. I was kind of shocked. Getting them to generate ideas of why we wouldn't want the Temple rebuilt was much harder. Maybe because I didn't have time to get into all the stuff about pilgrimages and purity and the like. It was just sort of surreal.

And I have no idea when I first learned about a lot of htis stuff- certainly not at that age. But I have no idea what I thought of it, at the time. I know when I took a class on prayer in 10th grade at Hebrew High, it was the first time I noticed a Bunch of the differences in the prayer book (admittedly, it was taught by an Orthodox rabbi, so when we did our "look through a real prayerbook to see all this stuff we've been learning about" practicum like thing, it was between the Gates of Prayer I was using and the Artscrolls. And I felt Really weird that it took me so much longer to read through things than it took my 2 (Orthodox) classmates.)

One of my quibbles with the Hebrew school I went to was that they didn't really teach us anything about Jewish thought. Now I'm realizing how hard and confusing that is to start doing. It's hard to start anywhere without some assumed knowledge of some of the other stuff. Not that I am quibbling any less. I am just appreciating how much background you need for the theology stuff to start working, now.

Teaching Dogma

So I was browsing around the internet in between bursts of practicing Yiddish vocab words for my quiz later today, and I was reading about a Hebrew school teacher's difficulty with another teacher teaching her/his students Jewish stuff that totally clashes with that community's ideology, and how one kid really latched onto the stuff in ways that were a little scary- like small-child producing hard-core misogyny scary.

And it reminded me of a discussion I led at work a month or so ago (so a 5th grade class at a Reform shul), introducing Rtzeh, starting with the historical background of the prayer, starting from Temple sacrifices. (yes, I cleared this with my boss, the lead educator for the grade first- she was all for it: she's also a Brandeis alumna, and I can see that effect All Over her lesson plans: it's really interesting to watch Professor Kimelman info trickle down to my 5th graders.) So I took the conversation and after explaining that this prayer, or rather an earlier variant thereof was what was said after a sacrifice was offered (not interested in getting into the discrepancy between reality and rabbinic imaginings thereof with the kids now- not yet), and talked about that the Temple was destroyed, and why, and what we think about that. And then we talked about why it hasn't been rebuilt, and why would we want it to be rebuilt or not want it to be rebuilt. And a bunch of my very Reform 5th graders were pretty into the idea of rebuilding the Temple so we could get back to killing animals for G-d. I was kind of shocked. Getting them to generate ideas of why we wouldn't want the Temple rebuilt was much harder. Maybe because I didn't have time to get into all the stuff about pilgrimages and purity and the like. It was just sort of surreal.

And I have no idea when I first learned about a lot of htis stuff- certainly not at that age. But I have no idea what I thought of it, at the time. I know when I took a class on prayer in 10th grade at Hebrew High, it was the first time I noticed a Bunch of the differences in the prayer book (admittedly, it was taught by an Orthodox rabbi, so when we did our "look through a real prayerbook to see all this stuff we've been learning about" practicum like thing, it was between the Gates of Prayer I was using and the Artscrolls. And I felt Really weird that it took me so much longer to read through things than it took my 2 (Orthodox) classmates.)

One of my quibbles with the Hebrew school I went to was that they didn't really teach us anything about Jewish thought. Now I'm realizing how hard and confusing that is to start doing. It's hard to start anywhere without some assumed knowledge of some of the other stuff. Not that I am quibbling any less. I am just appreciating how much background you need for the theology stuff to start working, now.