Exploring our values

The Jewish Family Identity Forum

With Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Two weeks after Hurricane Sandy, my brother and his family were still without power. However, with advance notice of the storm, his wife had prepared enough preserved foods to feed the family for weeks, and they’d all pitched in to gather branches and cut logs for the wood-burning stove. My 89-year-old father, too, was well-prepared, with canned and dry goods galore and a full tank of propane for the grill which served as his stove and water heater for a week. Preparedness was a significant factor in their coming out relatively unscathed from the disaster.

The recent storm has been only one in a long series of events to emphasize the need for preparation. Terrorist attacks and shootings have drawn attention to this imperative, leading to emergency protocols and disaster drills in hospitals and schools. In the news, preparedness has been highlighted in connection with the “fiscal cliff” and Benghazi. On a more positive note, the Summer Olympics also demonstrated the need for preparation, from production to performance.

I am reminded of a saying in Proverbs: “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.”

To some degree, we live this adage in our daily lives. We make bag lunches in the evening to avoid hectic school mornings, we fill the tank with gas before the red empty light comes on, and we put money aside for unexpected emergencies. We hope our leaders, on a grander scale, do the same, from bosses to coaches to presidents.

But do we take the same approach to our Jewish lives? Do we regularly prepare our Jewish selves? Do we do our part to prepare for the Jewish future?

Jewish preparedness goes beyond deep cleaning for Passover, contributing to the local Federation or sending kids to camp. Those — and all the myriad activities of Jewish living — are certainly important.

However the danger is that, by themselves, they can easily become empty rituals, token obligations or irrelevant intrusions. Without the underlying spirit that animates them, they simply wither away. “I’m Jewish,” if it’s used at all, becomes less informative than, “I’m an accountant” or “I’m an empty-nester,” simply a cultural affiliation or an ancestral footnote. If we don’t want Judaism to become an antique, some quaint relic of the past, we need to prepare ourselves for tomorrow and for generations into the future.

How do we prepare? In The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, authors Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer an intriguing hypothesis. They demonstrate that the revolutionary religious norm of universal literacy established by the rabbis of the early centuries of the common era was the single-most important factor in Jewish survival. Furthermore, those Jews who did not pursue literacy for themselves and their children quickly assimilated into the surrounding cultures and were lost to the Jewish people.

Let’s look at some examples from Jewish history. When the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.E., they scattered the Israelites across their empire, effectively eliminating any possibility of organizing study, maintaining a Sinai-informed culture, and recalling the prophets’ admonitions. Those Jews we know today as the Ten Lost Tribes.

Lesson learned. One hundred years later, the Babylonians invaded the Southern Kingdom of Judah, taking their captives to Babylon. There, the exiled Jews established learning communities that would eventually emerge as synagogues. When allowed to return to Israel, many did so, taking with them this new commitment to learning.

In both communities — in Babylonia and in Jerusalem — ongoing study allowed the Jewish people to flourish. Five hundred years later, as Judaea was being systematically destroyed by the Romans, Rabbi ben Zakkai cleverly schemed to get Roman General Vespasian’s permission to set up a school for the study of Jewish texts and traditions. The general acquiesced, and Yavneh prospered as a center for Jewish learning for centuries.

However, education’s impact isn’t limited to these ancient eras — or even to turbulent times. Following the trajectory of multiple Diasporas from the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the authors of Chosen Few show time and again that education — specifically Jewish studies — was the only consistent vehicle by which the Jews both maintained their identity and adapted to the lands in which they lived.

The world has changed since the days of Babylonia but the need for ongoing Jewish learning has not.

Birth, bagels, B’nai Mitzvah or even belief may be sufficient for one’s own Jewish identity, but they are not — and have never been — enough to maintain Jewish civilization.

Nor are communal organizations enough. Even Israel has not, historically, been enough.

But learning is different: it nourishes our intellectual and spiritual selves by giving us information, helping us find meaning, and addressing our own individual interests. It encourages each of us to see how we are part of a grand experiment, an avant-garde venture that gave the world, among other things, linear history, ethical monotheism, and the foundation for science. So why wait until there’s a storm on the horizon to prepare?

Family Discussion: What resources or online sites entice you to become an ongoing Jewish learner? What can you accomplish in a few minutes each day or a bit longer each week?

Literature to share

The Golem’s Latkes adapted by Eric Kimmel — In this humorous Chanukah tale, award-winning author and illustrator Eric Kimmel reinvents the Golem as a kindly servant who inadvertently teaches the values of responsibility and sharing. What happens when the legendary clay figure is put to work making latkes?

Four Thousand Years of Jewish History: Then and Now by Jack Lefcourt – This graphic (illustrated in a comic-like form) introduction to Jewish history is ideal for pre-teens and older. The simple, colorful graphics – including maps, timelines, and historical scenes – are paired with clear, concise captions that seamlessly move the reader from one era to the next. If you’re looking for an engaging thumbnail sketch of Jewish history, this is a perfect volume.