Blog

In response to the bizarre and totally new experience of the pandemic Covid-19, I asked students to interview their parents about “why a Jewish education for their child is important to them”.  As we struggled to provide valuable learning and engagement opportunities, I began to hear how literally secondary our supplemental religious school education felt to many parents trying to organize and create seder (order) in their family’s lives.  In the next shofar article, I’ll share some of those interviews.

For now, this article written by second year college student and CBE grad Maya Siegel, felt more compelling as we are all confronting various levels of fear, isolation and disconnection.  You may find much of it resonates with your own story or your child’s story relating to one’s sense of self and Jewish identity.  And I’m right there with you as are MY own children.  And I’m proud to say our program offers neither answer nor resolution to those challenges but rather tools with which you, your children, we, can continue to explore self and grow in our diverse identities together, and yes, struggle.  Yisrael is poetically translated as one who wrestles with God.  We’re just doin what we gotta do.

So, during this time of uncertainty and while counting the omer (ritual of marking the 50 days travel from Egypt to Sinai, from the narrow place of spiritual exile to the expansive space of human connection) Maya’s letter is a reminder that personal revelation is always a journey.

Believe it or not, this is my plug for continued involvement with your child’s formal Jewish education in before, during religious school and beyond.  In a more recent conversation with Maya, she shared that despite the resistance to the educational process and ambiguity around its relevance at the time, “I would be completely disconnected to my Jewish identity without it and would  be unable to connect to other Jewish people, like Leora, on any level.”