By Marci Rogozen, Aug. 17, 2024
Those of you that know me, are aware that my profession as a Jewish educator strongly influences my sense of identity. It gets tiring for people sometimes. My kids tell me to stop using my “teacher voice” every time that my volume rises. It’s part of me. And today you will be hearing my thoughts on Parshat V’Etchanan through my “teacher brain.” Welcome back to school!
There is no shortage of educators in the Library Minyan, so perhaps some of you are familiar with various approaches used by educators to ensure that their students’ learning is rigorous and meaningful. A very well known model of this approach comes from the Center for Depth and Complexity at USC. Icons are used to focus students and teachers on certain ways of thinking that make our learning meaningful. They include things like learning relevant vocabulary, seeing patterns and trends, looking for both big ideas AND details, and more. A similar approach has been developed at Bar Ilan University by the staff of the Lookstein Center, tailored specifically to the teaching of Jewish history. This approach has become central to my work. The idea is that in order to have deeply learned about a segment of Jewish history one must do the following:
- Identify which events are of Historical Significance
- Deal with Historical Evidence and Primary Sources
- Recognize Continuity and Change
- Recognize areas of Cause and Effect &
- Use Historical Imagination
It is only after one has approached these five processes that one moves to the final one, #6, which is Historical Judgment.
The most challenging of these, in my opinion, is Historical Imagination. How do we create learning experiences that encourage students to “step into” another time period and imagine what it would have meant to live a different life?
Our parasha touches upon this same subject, and gives us a lesson in how exactly the Jewish people are to meet this challenge of relating to our own history. In Devarim, chapter 4, verse 9, we begin reading a number of puzzling verses.
רַ֡ק הִשָּׁ֣מֶר לְךָ֩ וּשְׁמֹ֨ר נַפְשְׁךָ֜ מְאֹ֗ד
פֶּן־תִּשְׁכַּ֨ח אֶת־הַדְּבָרִ֜ים אֲשֶׁר־רָא֣וּ עֵינֶ֗יךָ
וּפֶן־יָס֨וּרוּ֙ מִלְּבָ֣בְךָ֔ כֹּ֖ל יְמֵ֣י חַיֶּ֑יךָ
וְהֽוֹדַעְתָּ֥ם לְבָנֶ֖יךָ וְלִבְנֵ֥י בָנֶֽיךָ:
But beware and watch yourself very well,
lest you forget the things that your eyes saw,
and lest these things depart from your heart, all the days of your life,
and you shall make them known to your children and to your children’s children,
The text then continues to describe the experiences of leaving Egypt and revelation at Mount Sinai, implying that those who are listening as they prepare to enter the Land “saw them with their own eyes.” But did they? At this point in their journey, most of those from the original generation that experienced these events have died. Most of those ready to enter the Land, did not witness these events! What can we learn from this seeming contradiction?
To get some insight, I would like to turn to Avraham Infeld, who is well known in the world of Jewish education. He has contributed to the field through his involvement in Hillel International, Birthright, and the Hartman Institute. As a Jewish history teacher, I am obsessed with his contention that there is no such thing as Jewish history! If he is correct, perhaps I should retire right now, knowing that my work is done! But life isn’t that easy, so let’s explore his idea more closely.
Infeld has shared his idea that in order for the Jewish people to remain viable, in spite of our diversity, we need to see Jewish continuity as a 5 Legged Table. He describes 5 types of connection to peoplehood, identifying each of these with one leg of the “table” that is Jewish life. He asserts that as long as we can each hold three of these connections, the table will stand and Jewish continuity is secure. We will also have enough commonality to bind us together.
These 5 connections are:
- Jewish Familiy : the feeling that we are connected to other Jews
- Mt. Sinai: the covenant that gives us a role in the world
- Connection to Israel
- The Hebrew Language
And, the one that most captures my imagination…. - Memory
While Infeld has argued that there is no such thing as Jewish History, he does rely on the importance of Jewish memory. Every year I challenge my students to dig more deeply into this idea of Jewish memory. It is SO Jewish to take what others might consider their history, and instead turn it into memory. After all, we all left Egypt. We were there together at Sinai. We sit in the dark and read Eicha. We stand while reciting שירת הים. We live in our sukkot. And in this week’s parasha, Moshe has already created this highly successful approach to history/memory. He tells those ready to enter the Land, that they were there leaving Egypt and they did stand at Mt. Sinai. And even today we “know” that we were there with them. This is not history that we learn just from a book, the story of what happened to other people. This is our story that we experience through reenactment. The challenge for us is to keep these events alive as memories, so that they don’t become merely history.
What might that mean to all of us sitting here? As we have lived through the difficult months since October 7, our memories are deepened. I am quite certain that I am not the only one who, upon seeing the images of that horrible day, thought of what Babylonia did to Jerusalem, or how what our people experienced during the Spanish Inquisition. With our hostages still being held, we remember that this is not the first time that Jews have been held hostage. It is not only that we understand today’s tragedies better because we see the longer pattern. It is also that we understand the tragedies of long ago much better than we could have before, and we “remember” them more completely.
So we keep on talking about the past. It fertilizes our understanding of the present. And the present adds to our understanding of the past. I guess I can’t retire yet. But perhaps I should not call myself a Jewish history teacher, but rather a Jewish memory teacher..