My first post

What Are We Waiting For?

Last month, six of our community’s supplementary school principals took a special field trip to the Criterion Theatre in downtown New Haven for a screening and discussion of filmmaker Davis Guggenheim’s (An Inconvenient Truth) new film Waiting for Superman.  The film chronicles some of the failures of the American public education system by detailing how it inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth.  . The film’s title comes from Harlem activist and educator Geoffrey Canada explaining the moment when he found out that Superman was not real. “One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me ‘Superman’ did not exist… She thought I was crying because it’s like Santa Claus is not real. I was crying because no one was coming with enough power to save us.” For Canada, Superman represented the hope that he could be saved from the poverty and struggles of his young life in the South Bronx. If there was no Superman, what hope did he have? 

Unfortunately, Canada’s experience is far from unique, and certainly not limited to the mean streets of underprivileged neighborhoods. While I cannot speak for all of our community’s schools and education programs, we must recognize that there is no savior coming to change the declining enrollment rates in the Jewish education system. For example as the leader of MAKOM, it’s clear to me that we cannot continue to wait for Superman to save a program that, despite its high quality and student satisfaction rating, at one point boasted three times the participants. Neither can we expect the magic bullet of improved marketing and outreach to provide a dramatic turnaround. Not even a new crop of interesting classes and dynamic teachers have rescued us from the intellectual and cultural dangers staring us in the face.   

In my view, the only way to ‘save’ MAKOM and perhaps to ‘rescue’ Jewish education from the slow death of ever-decreasing enrollment and relevance is to institute radical, systemic change. One of the keys to reinventing Jewish education in 21^st Century America is to become centers of educational Research and Development focused on engaging people in creating new alternatives to traditional programs. Today’s students can only be meaningfully engaged in Jewish learning if it is presented in the same form and language they use every day, and if it is media savvy. Experience, that greatest of all teachers, must be a bigger player in our educational process. Success will come in the brave new world of post-modernity as we learn to teach and learn at the same time, in multiple venues, at multiple times, and in multiple ways, such as trips, the arts, and films. 

MAKOM and the CJLL have already begun this process by creating two new programs for teens. Madrichim Institute engages teen teacher’s aides from our religious school a unique once a month education seminar.  Chaver, a new joint initiative between CJLL, Jewish Family Service, the Towers, and the Yale New Haven Hospital Chaplaincy,  is engaging teens through the Jewish values of respecting the elderly and visiting the sick. (The Women of Vision Society of the Jewish Foundation also provides funding for this program).

It’s a good start. But we need to extend these ideas further and partner with and encourage other organizations to conduct their own R&D. The goal is for individuals and institutions to be willing to explore next-gen educational opportunities with an entrepreneurial spirit. Our common goal is to enhance participation in Jewish learning for all.  It is time for us to develop new strategies to engage learners of all ages.  We cannot afford to wait for Superman. Instead, let’s discover new ways to promote Jewish living through Jewish learning. 

Are We Serious

In October, the Center for Jewish Life and Learning launched its fall semester of the Jewish Lens, a film class that meets twice per month at the JCC. This semester, the theme for the course is Searching for Jewish Identity and the series was launched with, A Serious Man (USA, 2009) the Academy Award nominated film written and directed by Oscar winners Joel and Ethan Coen.

A challenging tale of woe and failure, the film offers interesting insights into our connections to Judaism and the challenges that we as Jewish educators face on a daily basis in today’s society. Even though the events of A Serious Man takes place in 1967, the struggles of the protagonist Larry Gopnik, (played marvelously by Michael Stuhlbarg who can currently be seen as Arnold Rothstein in HBO’s series Boardwalk Empire) in trying to discover why these horrible calamities are befalling him are a wonderful parable to the struggles of the modern, American Jewish community. While many Jews whom I have spoken with are deeply troubled by the film’s “Jewish message,” most notably the portrayal of the three rabbis from whom Larry seeks counsel and advice, I saw the film as a deep expression of the challenges we face as a modern Jewish community – most notably where and how do we seek for answers to the big questions that trouble and mystify us and what do we do with the answers that we receive, especially if we are not satisfied with them or they do not answer the question.

In reviewing the film for Tablet Magazine, Liel Liebowitz wrote that the film is less about Gopnik and his woes and more about the challenges of the Jewish people in the modern world. For Liebowitz, and I think I agree with him, simplicity is the enemy of modernity, “Modernity—in its American strand, at least—requires of its practitioners a growing specialization, an increased sophistication, a neverending striving towards certainty. It is, in other words, the very opposite of the Talmudic undertaking, in which the argument itself is the central pursuit and a finite truth, should it ever materialize, is of little concern.”

PBS religion editor, Cathleen Falsani, who wrote a book about the Coen Brothers and religion in their films; The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, commented on the film’s rabbis and their perceived lack of advice. “To their credit, the rabbis in the film don’t really try to give an answer. I think they kind of encourage the wrestling out of the answer, which is, in fact, in my estimation, to continue to live your life.”

Is this enough? Is this what we want or do we ultimately need answers to these big questions of why? What do we make of the fact that the most enlightening moment in the film comes from the lyrics of Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love; “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies,”

In an interview, Joel and Ethan Coen suggested that the film is the ultimate schlemiel joke (not a modern adaptation of the Book of Job as others suggest), the unlucky character who constantly fails made famous in Yiddish literature and folklore. I believe that the challenge for us as Jewish educators and as a community at large is thus: If Larry (and by extension the Jewish community) is indeed the schlemiel and enlightenment is found not in traditional places but within in popular culture -- how and by what means do we engage in the search for meaning and answers? What should we be doing to promote the concept of Jewish living through Jewish learning – and indeed is it enough? I welcome your feedback at rwalter@jewishnewhaven.org.