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The Missing Class

I have an idea that I think could really improve Jewish education. It’s so simple and obvious that I wasn’t going to write about it, since I figure everyone’s already thought of it. The idea came to me after a rabbi told me about his dream of broadcasting, on the Internet, a weekly class on Judaism designed for the huge number of Jewish kids who aren’t getting a Jewish education.
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April 23, 2009

I have an idea that I think could really improve Jewish education. It’s so simple and obvious that I wasn’t going to write about it, since I figure everyone’s already thought of it. The idea came to me after a rabbi told me about his dream of broadcasting, on the Internet, a weekly class on Judaism designed for the huge number of Jewish kids who aren’t getting a Jewish education.

This got me thinking: If I had only one hour a week to encourage Jewish students to connect with their Judaism, what would I teach them? What Jewish subject would have the greatest chance to instill Jewish pride and make a student say, “Yeah, that’s something I want to be a part of?”

Would it be a class on the Torah portion of the week? The Talmud? History? The rituals of our faith? The meaning of Shabbat and the holidays? Israel? Tikkun olam? Jewish literature? Prayer?

In other words, would it be one of the many subjects already taught in Jewish schools, or would it be something different?

I found my answer when I took a group of kids to see the Lakers play at Staples Center. Have you ever seen the look on a kid’s face when his team is winning? Have you seen the loyalty that these kids have for their home team? When my 10-year-old son and his buddies cheer for their beloved Lakers, they feel more than excitement — they feel like they’re part of something.

I thought: Why can’t we instill in all Jewish kids that same kind of pride and loyalty for their Jewish “home team”?

So here’s my simple and obvious idea for a class that ought to be taught in every Jewish school in America:

Jewish Contributions to Humanity.

That’s right, I think it’s important that we teach Jewish kids how their religion and their “home team” have made the world a better place. How much better?

Here is prominent historian Paul Johnson from “A History of the Jews”:

“All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift.

“To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of personal responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews it might have been a much emptier place.”

Or check out these words spoken in 1809 by our second president, John Adams:

“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.”

Here is what author and scholar Thomas Cahill, in his 1998 “The Gifts of the Jews,” has to say about “this oddball tribe, this raggle-taggle band, this race of wanderers who are the progenitors of the Western world”:

“There is simply no one else remotely like them; theirs is a unique vocation. Indeed, the very idea of vocation, of a personal destiny, is a Jewish idea.

“Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. And not only would our sensorium, the screen through which we receive the world, be different: we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.

“Without the Hebrew Bible, we would never have known the abolitionist movement, the prison-reform movement, the antiwar movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the movements of indigenous and dispossessed peoples for their human rights, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the free speech and pro-democracy movements in such Far Eastern countries as South Korea, the Philippines and even China.

“These movements of modern times have all employed the language of the Bible.”

This is not about being or feeling superior, but about contributing to the world, and since biblical times, there’s little doubt that Jews and Judaism have been fundamental to human progress. But how many Jewish schools in America are teaching this to their students — not as an afterthought to a history class, but as a bona fide curriculum that is taken as seriously as Chumash or Navi or how to build a sukkah?

My guess is, not many.

This is a missed opportunity. Teaching our contributions to humanity would not only build Jewish pride, it would encourage Jewish kids to grab the baton and try to make their own contributions.

It would also remind them that the Jewish story is more than one of persecution and suffering; that before and after the pogroms and the Holocaust, the Jewish way has always been to share our gifts with the rest of the world.

Of course, we need to feel comfortable speaking highly about ourselves. The Jewish tradition of self-criticism is wonderful, but we can overdo it. If you ask me, we’re overdue for a pushback to the hypocritical and growing Jew bashing that has put so many Jews on the defensive.

This pushback can start in our schools, by teaching a new generation of Jews about their people’s eternal value to the world, and instilling a Jewish pride based on knowledge and not just tribal emotion.

So here’s hoping that Jewish educators across the country will develop this idea in time for the next school year. Worst that can happen, we’ll make a few more fans — and God knows we can use them. l

David Suissa is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Tribe Media/Jewish Journal, where he has been writing a weekly column on the Jewish world since 2006. In 2015, he was awarded first prize for “Editorial Excellence” by the American Jewish Press Association. Prior to Tribe Media, David was founder and CEO of Suissa Miller Advertising, a marketing firm named “Agency of the Year” by USA Today. He sold his company in 2006 to devote himself full time to his first passion: Israel and the Jewish world. David was born in Casablanca, Morocco, grew up in Montreal, and now lives in Los Angeles with his five children.

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