Divrei Rav Josh: Parshat Vaera- Hagar and Education As Self-Discovery

“From a social standpoint, dependence denotes a power rather than a weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always a danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone — an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remedial suffering of the world.”
-John Dewey, Democracy and Education

While a major goal of education is to help students become independent thinkers and actors, a subtle, yet equally important goal, is to help students understand the robust learning only takes place in community, and that a well-educated learner recognizes that discovery comes not through acting alone, but through seeking out the wisdom, advice, and assistance of others.    This realization is found within the subtle themes of Parshat Vaera, where the story of Hagar teaches us something unique about what it means to help a person when they are blocked in their pathway to discovery.   

In Parshat Vaera, the Hagar story provides iterary clues to teach us about self-discovery and learning.   In particular, the act of seeing plays particularly critical role in understanding what transformation takes place for Hagar when she is alone with Ishmael in the desert.    The Torah states the following:

“And she went and sat down from afar, at about the distance of two bowshots, for she said, "Let me not see the child's death." And she sat from afar, and she raised her voice and wept.  And God heard the lad's voice, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, "What is troubling you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the child’s voice in the place where he is.  Rise, pick up the lad and grasp your hand upon him, for I shall make him into a great nation."  And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the pouch with water and gave the lad to drink” (Bereishit 21:16-21).   

In this passage, when Hagar cannot find water, she looks away from her son, to avoid seeing him pain, yet when God hear the cry of Ishmael, Hagar’s eyes are opened, so that she might see a way to satiate her son.   However, the text from Bereishit never actually says that Hagar closed her eyes, and thus our commentators see a deeper meaning beneath Hagar’s act of choosing not to see and coming to see.

In his literary analysis of this passage and other familial narratives throughout Sefer Bereishit, my teacher, Devora Steinmetz, writes in her book From Father to Son that we must understand Hagar’s inability to see as metaphorical, rather than literal, for Hagar’s emotional anguish at being banished from Abraham’s house “blinded” her as to how to care for her son.  Steinmetz writes:

“Hagar leaves with Ishmael.   She is now his significant parent...Hagar wanders, directionless, in the desert and casts her son under the shrubs when their water runs out.   Refusing to see her dying child, she sits far away, and “lifted up her voice and cried...Hagar is unable to see the well which can serve her son; in despair, she moves far away from her son, refusing to see him die.   Ishmael is saved only when an angel calls to Hagar and God forces her to see the well to which she had been blind” (Devora Steinmetz, From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis, 83-84).

In her contextual reading of this passage from Bereishit, Steinmetz points out that we should not assume that Hagar was momentarily unable to see using her conventional senses, but that she cannot, or chooses not to, see the way to help save her son.    However, by God intervening in this dramatic moment, Hagar’s mind is re-directed, so that she might see that which was previously obstructed from her vision.

The literary nuances acknowledged by Steinmetz are also noticed by a famous midrash, which points out that the blindness that God removed from the eyes of Hagar is similar to a spiritual blindness that oftentimes afflicts human beings.   The midrash states the following:

“Where he is. R. Simon said: The ministering angels rushed to indict [Ishmael], exclaiming, "Sovereign of the Universe! Will You raise a well for one who will one day kill Your children with thirst?" [God] asked them, "What is he now—righteous or wicked? " They replied, "Righteous." He told them, "I judge a man only as he is in the moment." [Thus, Scripture continues], 'Come, lift up the boy . . . ' Then God opened her eyes, [and she saw a well of water.] (Gen.21:18–19).

“R. Benjamin said: All may be presumed to be blind until the Holy One, Blessed be God, enlightens their eyes, as the verse states, “Then God opened her eyes...” (Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 33:14).

In this midrash, we are taught that the blindness experienced by Hagar is similar to any moment in our lives when cannot clearly see an alternate solution, answer, or point of view, and only become enlightened when someone helps us see through our previously obstructed vision.  In truth, all of us, for time to time, are guilty of closing our minds to a solution right in front of us, and Hagar’s emerging relationship with God is an example of where someone finds a moment of clarity that helps them see a solution that existed all along.

At some moment, every student is like Hagar in the desert, trying to solve a problem on their own, yet blind to the immense learning possibilities that can exist when they are willing to allow someone else to help them.  In our Schechter community, we are continually challenged to help our students recognize moments when a solution was in front of them all alongside, yet could only be found when a “guide on the side” could help them see water in the middle of the wilderness.  May we each have the merit of guiding our children and students into a pathway of educational self-discovery.   

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Lekh Lekha

This past week, students in our Upper School and parents from across grades at Schechter had the opportunity to learn from Doug Rosen, the Director of Partners in Prevention at Beit Teshuvah in Los Angeles, California, the only Jewish residential treatment center for people suffering from addictions and other harmful behaviors.   At Doug’s parent program, he spoke about the importance of teaching children resilience, and how the most important thing parents can do to help their children avoid addictive behaviors is teaching children how to be OK messing up.   

To highlight this point, Doug mentioned Paul Tough’s recent book How Children Succeed, where Tough interviewed teachers in affluent suburbs about what are the essential skills to helping those children succeed.    According to Karen Fierst, a learning specialist at the Riverdale Country Day School,

“Our kids don’t put up with a lot of suffering. They don’t have a threshold for it. They’re protected against it quite a bit. And when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents. We try to talk to parents about having to sort of make it okay for there to be challenge, because that’s where learning happens” (Paul Tough, How Children Succeed, 84).

In order to help children succeed, we must help not see their lives as pre-written, in any sense, but rather a constant exploration of opportunities, challenges, mistakes and triumphs, each of which the individual child must learn how to handle on their own, as if they were entering the world for the first time, a lesson that we learn from Abraham in this week’s parasha of Lekh Lekha.

In contrast to Parshat Noah, where we are given a specific motivation by God to call Noah into service, Parshat Lekh Lekha provides no reason for why God chooses to call Abraham at that particular time and place, and also provides no reason why Abraham was chosen over others.  For many of our commentators, knowing little about Abraham’s pre-story is considered highly problematic, and thus many of our rabbinic commentators recount legends of Abraham’s precocious monotheism, such as the midrashim where Abraham destroyed idols in his father’s idol shop, or when Abraham determined that one God existed by viewing the sun and the moon passing over one another in the sky one night.   

However, according to Nahum Sarna, it is precisely the ambiguity of Abraham’s origins that make his story so unique, for it challenges the reader to see how Abraham’s willingness to answer God’s call represented Abraham’s rebirth as a human being.   Sarna writes:

“The story of Abraham opens without an identifying formula or preliminary observation of the type that introduces the Noah narrative.   The patriarch bursts upon the scene of history with astounding suddenness.   The first seventy-five years of his life are passed over in total silence.  God’s call comes in an instant, without forewarning or preparation.  It is brief and compelling in its demands, and Abram’s immediate response marks the true beginning of his life.  The momentous event unfolds with startling rapidity, and any introductory embellishment could only have a diminishing effect” (Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, 88).

According to Sarna, by not telling us a story of Abraham’s origins, we see Abraham as someone who simply heard God’s call and answered it, willing to take the risk that would lead to the reward of a unique covenant that marked a new beginning in the Torah narrative.   

In a Hasidic commentary on this very question, Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk writes in the No’am Elimelekh that Abraham’s lack of distinguished family origins provides a paradigm for how we ought to understand the way in which each individual person should strive for righteousness.  He writes the following:

“There is one who is righteous because of the merit of his fathers or because he is always found among the righteous. The truth, however, is that one must pay no attention to this. A righteous person who is the son of a righteous person must pay no attention to the merit of his fathers, saying that the merit of his fathers will be available to him, and so he need not exert himself in the service of the Creator. He must pay no attention to this, but rather he must greatly exert and reinforce himself in his service of the Blessed One. And a righteous person who is not the son of a righteous person must not despair of himself, saying that since he lacks the merit of his fathers to help him, he will be unable to reach the service of the blessed Creator. He must not say this, but rather he must serve God, may He be blessed, and one who comes to purify himself is assisted by heaven. He must only keep in mind that God, may He be blessed, does all this for him to help him” (No'am Elimelekh, Lekh Lekha).

In this commentary, the Noam Elimelekh points out that by lacking a distinguished family lineage, we are challenged to see Abraham as one who did not allow his past to dictate his pursuit of righteousness.   Similarly, when helping people locate their moral compass, it becomes essential to help them no allow their past to dictate how they see themselves in the present, for who does not know someone from humble beginnings who rose to great heights, or someone from lofty beginnings who descended into tragedy and despair?   Instead, by seeing ourselves as an Abraham, who simply looked at their world for the first time, we are embracing the possibility of holiness in our lives that can lead us to the kind of worship of God the Torah envisions.

Abraham saw himself as someone who was going to write a new chapter in his life, one so significant that it would be as if everything that came previously was somehow insignificant.  While this analogy is extreme, it provides us a useful model for how we can educate our students, helping them see every challenge in their life as an opportunity to write a new story about themselves, an opportunity to begin anew, no matter what that child feels about their past performance.  May each of have the merit of helping see the potential that comes with making mistakes, and help them write a story where each stumbling block can become a stepping stone.   

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Noah

One of the things that most inspires me about working at Schechter is the way in which a school is the paradigm of a community where communal and individual achievement are ultimately linked to one another.   While the goal of any school is to help each student maximize their individual potential so that they might become a successful contributor to society, ultimately that student most greatly benefits when they can learn in a supportive, energetic, and thoughtful community for every other student.   While the benefits of this kind of community seems obvious, when we examines the generations portrayed in Parshat Noah, we see the consequences of what it means to be in a community when the individual is lost in the crowd, and learn an important object lesson about what it means to care for one another.

The bookends of Parshat Noah reference two different generations, each of which who, in some way, were considered to be working against the will of God.  Famously, the tenth chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin records that the generations of the flood and the generation of the Tower of Babel are each denied a place in the World to Come, yet the question becomes how we can compare the sins of the generation of the flood and the generation of the Tower of Babel, since the latter’s sin seems to be far less severe than the former.    However, when Rashi comments upon this mishnah is his commentary on the Talmud, he actually argues that the sin of the Tower of Babel was worse than the flood.  He writes:

“Which is worse? [The sin] of the generation of the Flood or that of the generation of the dispersion? They [the generation of the Flood] did not reach out to attack the Essence [God], while they [the generation of the dispersion] reached out to attack the Essence, as it were, and to battle it.  They [the generation of the Flood] were washed away, while they [the generation of the dispersion] were destroyed.  However, the generation of the Flood were robbers and there was strife amongst them -- therefore they were destroyed -- while they [the generation of the dispersion] acted with love and friendship amongst themselves, as it says: “One language and unified things.”  From here you learn that strife is hated and peace is great”   (Rashi on Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1).

At first glance, it would appear that Rashi is actually making the argument that the generation of the flood performed a worse sin, since the generation of the Tower of Babel seemed to act in unison when attempting to build a tower to the sky.    However, when our rabbinic sources interpret the meaning of the building of that grand tower, ultimately our commentators recognize the dangers of acting uniformly when bulilding that tower.

Parshat Noah tells us that the people spoke the following prior to building the Tower of Babel: “Let us build a city and a tower, whose top reaches to heaven; And let us make a name for ourselves” (Bereishit 11:4).   When examining this verse, our early rabbinic sources recognize that the phrase “And let us make a name for ourselves” sowed the seeds of this generation’s destruction, for somehow their building of this tower was clouded by a destructive set of motivations, best demonstrated in the following midrash:

“The tower had seven steps from the east and seven from the west.   The bricks were hauled up from one side, the descent was on the other.  If a man fell down and died, no attention was paid to him, but if one brick fell down, they would sit and weep and say: Woe to us, when will another one be hauled up in its place?”  (Pirke Rabbi Eliezer 24).

In this midrash, we see that those who built the tower of babel sought to achieve the end of making a name for themselves by means of making a grand tower, while ignoring the dignity of the individual in the process.  One can only imagine the callous disregard for human dignity that would lead someone to worry more about a lost brick than a slain worker, yet the midrash from Pirke Rabbi Eliezer captures exactly why Rashi and others deem the sin of this generation to be so great, because building the Tower of Babel was an attempt at a communal unity that destroyed the desire to care for any individual.

In truth, this disregard for human dignity is not limited the biblical period, but rather can be found anytime a leader or a society tries to achieve a grand goal that tramples upon the needs of others.   Nehama Leibowitz writes the following regarding this kind of attitude:

“Gigantic buildings, pyramids, marble monuments, impressive squares have always served as the means by which a great dictator has wished to perpetuate and aggrandize his name, likening himself to a god, overcoming through them his feelings of inferiority and through them trying to transcend the inescapable fate of his mortality.”  (Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Bereshit, page 103)

We can think of far too many examples where an individual or an individual society desires to achieve greatness or supremacy to such a degree that they completely disregard upon whose needs they might trample in the wake of achieving that goal.    Instead, our Jewish tradition envisions that we build communities where we achieve great things through embracing the unique value of each individual, for recognizing each person’s uniqueness leads us to plant the seeds that lead to communal blossoms.   

In a school community, we are faced with a similar task to the generation of the Tower of Babel, the desire to help individual students maximize their unique potential, while also strengthening an institution that empowers those individuals to become who we know they can be.  Yet unlike the generation of the tower, we have the benefit of knowing that we can only achieve this goal through allowing the goal of the community and the goal of the individual to work in tandem, creating a partnership of success that leads to great learning, and great students.   May each of enjoy embracing this most wonderful challenge...

Shabbat Shalom!

Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Bereishit

Daniel Goleman, who most famously popularized the terms of “emotional intelligence” and “social intelligence” in our society, recently wrote a book entitled Ecological Intelligence, which attempted to explain why we must adopt a similar stance to understand the importance of acting intelligently with respect to our planet.  Regarding this topic, he writes the following:

“We go through our daily life awash in a sea of things we buy, use, and throw away, waste, or save.  Each of those things has its own history and its own future, backstories and endings largely hidden from our eyes, a web of impacts left along the way from the initial expression or concoction of its ingredients, during its manufacture and transport, through subtle consequences of its use in our homes and workplaces, to the day we dispose of it.  And yet these unseen impacts of all that stuff may be their most important aspect” (Daniel Goleman, Ecological Intelligence).

According to Goleman, a person who possesses ecological intelligence is one who can relate to the world in a way that sees how their individual actions affect the ecological balance, which, by extension, affect every living being on the planet.    Goleman’s vision is a modern notion, yet one whose origins are found in Parshat Bereishit, where humanity is charged to see their relationship to the natural world as one that requires thinking seriously about what it means to serve as a steward to God’s creation.         
        
While the first chapter of Bereishit tells us that God tells the first people that they should “be fruitful and multiply; replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Bereishit 1:28), our rabbinic commentators make clear that this command does not justify wanton destruction and widespread abuse of natural resources, as exemplified by the following comment on this verse by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook, the first Chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel:

“No rational person can doubt that the Bible, when it commands people to “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and all living things that move on the earth,” does not have in mind a cruel ruler who exploits his people and servants for his own will and desires—God forbid that such a detestable law of slavery (be attributed to God) who “is good to all and his tender care rests upon all his creatures (Psalms 145:9) and “the world is built on tender mercy” (Psalms 89:3)…”

Rav Kook rejects the notion that one can read the first chapter of Bereishit and see God giving humanity carte blanche to do with the earth as one pleases, and Rav Kook’s comment is echoed in the commentary on this verse by rabbinic commentators throughout the ages.  Instead, the rabbis come to understand a different relationship that people must develop with the world.

When one reads the second chapter of Bereishit, one finds God providing specific directions to humanity as to how they should exist within the balance of the natural world.   The Torah states:

“And so the Lord God took the man, and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to guard it” (Bereishit 2:15).   

In this verse, two verbs form the heart of what humanity is meant to do with God’s creation, namely that humanity is placed on earth l’ovdah, to work the land, and l’shomrah, to protect it.   In this sense, humanity can more accurately described as stewards of God’s creation, responsible for upkeep and sustenance, and liable if they abuse that land in an irresponsible manner.   This analogy is outlined most explicitly by Jonah ibn Janakh, a medieval commentator and grammarian.  He writes the following:

“A man is held responsible for everything he receives in this world, and his children are responsible too…The fact is that nothing belongs to him, everything is the Lord’s, and whatever he received he received only on credit and the Lord will exact payment for it. This may be compared to a person who entered a city and found no one there. He walked into the house and there found a table set with all kinds of food and drink. So he began to eat and drink thinking, “I deserve all of this, this is all mine, I shall with it what I please.” He didn’t even notice that the owners were watching him from the side! He will yet have to pay for everything he ate and drank, for he is in a spot from which he will not be able to escape” (Jonah ibn Janach, from The Living Talmud).

This above commentary lays out an explicit evaluation of how we must understand the way in which all of us are held accountable for the decisions we make on this planet.   As such, the way in which teach others, and especially our students, to be responsible stewards for creation takes on a critical importance.

While our primary task in providing a Jewish education to our students at Schechter is to ensure that they care and understood the core ideas, practices, and concepts, of our Jewish tradition, we also have the responsibility to place those objectives into a context, and remind them about their obligation to take those ideas and use them to affect the world.    Perhaps nothing in requires a renewed sense of care and responsibility than the way in which we treat our planet, an idea that finds its roots in our parasha, and should affect the hearts and minds of our Schechter Community.   

May each of us have the merit of charging every member of the Schechter Community to see how our Jewish values can and must affect our sense of responsibility to care for God’s wondrous acts of creation.

Shabbat Shalom!