Bo

Bo - Helena Miller 

Dr. Helena Miller is the Director of Research and Evaluation at the UJIA. She has taught adults and children in a variety of settings. She holds a doctorate in Jewish Education and has written widely on many aspects of Jewish Education.

If ever there was a verse in Torah that emphasizes the importance of educating our children for the future of Judaism, it can be found in this week's sedra. After afflicting Egypt with seven terrible plagues, the sedra opens with God, once again, sending Moses and his brother Aaron to Pharoah. This time, a devastating plague of locusts is threatened. Pharoah's advisors counsel him: "Let the men go - don't you yet realize that Egypt is lost?" (Exodus 10:7). Pharoah calls Moses and Aaron back and appears to be relenting. He agrees that the Jews can leave to serve their God, but before he can give the final approval he asks exactly who is going. "We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters" (Exodus 10:9). With these words, Moses proclaims to Pharoah and to all subsequent generations, that for the Jewish people, religious service includes our children.

Pharoah says "no" and tells Moses to leave the children behind. He knows that without the children, the Israelites have no chance of religious survival beyond the present generation. Moses refuses, and as we know, locusts and two further appalling plagues are visited upon the Egyptians before all the Israelites are permitted to leave Egypt.

Muskin (2000) comments that Moses understood that if you leave children outside the religious experience, then Jewish heritage is jeopardised. This resonates directly with the modern Diaspora experience. As the generations became more distant from the strong Jewish family lifestyles of nineteenth century Eastern Europe, assimilation became the prevailing trend (Alderman 1999). Many efforts in the last twenty five years have sought to redress that balance; the increase in Jewish day school provision, attempts to invigorate the chedarim, Youth Movement activities, resources and initiatives to tempt young people to participate in Shabbat and festival synagogue events and services.

We know from initiatives from the 1980s and beyond how crucial participation is in Jewish life of the whole family. Jewish family education and programming, where parents and children learn together and in parallel, is key to making a Jewish home and raising a Jewish child. Schein (2007) describes successful family education as inspiration and support for "the Jewish journeys of our families".

The ultimate Jewish family learning experience has its origins in this week's sedra, and that is, of course, the annual seder, the re-telling of the Exodus from Egypt at the beginning of Pesach. The dramatic story, told in answer to the four questions traditionally asked by the youngest present, is meant to capture the attention of young people. In this week's sedra, we find three out of the four questions asked at the seder. How many of us have sat through sedarim in our own youth that seemed entirely focused on the adults at the table? There is no excuse for that today! Many, many interactive Haggadot have been published and an array of creative activities and ideas exists for livening up your seder, and making it meaningful for the whole family.

So, in this week's sedra we have a contemporary blueprint for the future of Judaism: bring children into the Jewish experience, educate the whole family, and make the educative process interactive. Sounds like a year-round Limmud conference...