Some comments in my last post, and the positive experience with Richard’s thread on stories of anti-Semitism, makes me think it might be good to have a thread sharing stories about what Jewish education (if any) the Jewish folks had as kids (and non-Jews too, if they had any experience with a Jewish education — the younger sister of a Catholic friend of mine spent so much time at the JCC as a kid that she knew more Jewish songs than most of her Jewish friends).
Starting with me. I went to playgroup and pre-school through my synagogue, then attended Hebrew school for ten years (to the middle of high school — I went to public school, but in a very heavily Jewish area). I never went to any Jewish summer camps.
My synagogue was Conservative, and I’d say the education was about 1/2 religious and 1/2 a mixture of Jewish history and culture (which included discussions on Zionism and Israel). Obviously, we had units on the Holocaust. I don’t actually remember being inculcated with “mistrusting the goyim” — I say that because I had one Hebrew school teacher who clearly was very keen on promoting that vision and I recall reacting very strongly against it.
On Israel itself, the textbooks we read from were pretty one-sided Zionist (a lot of “making the desert bloom” type rhetoric). But it was counter-balanced by the congregation’s strongly progressive bent — we were officially affiliated with Meretz (the Israeli left-wing party), and I strongly recall when Bibi Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in the mid-90s, the prevailing sentiment was shock that Israelis elected a crazy man to the head of government.
Overall, the congregation was heavily Democratic, and didn’t see its liberal commitments as remotely in tension with being pro-Israel. Nobody mentioned anti-Zionist Jews — they weren’t disparaged, they just didn’t exist. The two-state solution was overwhelmingly popular, but there wasn’t much acknowledgement that Palestinians were legitimately aggrieved about anything. I was taught to feel comfortable as a Jew, but given how much of Jewish history is centering around the moral superiority of getting beaten-up, it was tough not to feel at least a vague sense of unease and threat. There was a sense that even if things are good now, they won’t necessarily stay that way. Vigilance and guardedness were the most important things if we were to ward off a new era of anti-Semitism.
I don’t know how much the education or the environment was typical or not (particularly compared against a Reform, Reconstructionist, or Orthodox upbringing). But I’m curious to find out.
I went to an Israeli preschool (by which I mean, a Jewish preschool in the US run by Israelis, where most of the kids had Israeli parents), then kindergarten at a Reform synagogue, followed by about two years of religious school at said synagogue. The other kids at Temple were mean to me,* and I was afraid of the cool teenagers who helped with the classes, and my parents thought the community was sort of snobby, so we left. After a few years without religious school, I spent about four years attending a small, all-girls study group with a rabbi, and, for the last year or two of that, seeing a tutor to learn to read Hebrew, in preparation for my bat mitzvah. I developed a renewed interest in Judaism around age 16, so I took a few classes at my local Chabad house and at back at the Reform synagogue.
Overall (and setting aside the mean kids), I had a very positive experience. We sung Jewish songs, learned Torah stories (I am very grateful for that bedrock of cultural and literary knowledge!), made hamantashen and sufganyot. All my Jewish educational experiences were with very liberal groups. Tzedakah and tikkun olam were central themes (close seconds to monotheism). We were taught to interpret Judaism as demanding justice and equality. I am sure that my consciousness of how systems of oppression work is in no small part due to Judaism; my outrage at racism, sexism, heterosexism, ablism, and classism are all grounded in my early Jewish education. My opposition to the Israeli government’s actions is grounded in my Jewish education. (My family has been critical of the Israeli government since its very inception.) There was also an emphasis on the importance of discussion and debate in Judaism; I came out of Hebrew school with refined critical thinking skills, a love of Jewish culture, and a passion for books.
That said, it wasn’t perfect. My kindergarten class was taught about the Holocaust (to my parents’ horror), which was traumatizing and inappropriate. I often felt like an outsider — even among Jews, I’ve always been shy and nerdy. The NFTYites** always seemed so fucking preppy. (Though my equally nerdy younger brother has been to a bunch of NFTY events and camps and loves it.) I never found it objectionable on the Zionism front, though — certainly there was strong support of Israel’s right to exist (a sentiment I share, more or less), but there was also some awareness of the myriad injustices perpetrated by the Israeli government and real concern for the rights and well-being of the Palestinians. The focus was on the importance of treating both Israelis and Palestinians fairly, and on minimizing all violence.
We didn’t talk all that much about antisemitism in my formal Jewish education, but I definitely learned about that at home. My grandparents narrowly escaped the Holocaust as children; my grandmother told my a lot of stories about that when I was little. Both my mother and grandmother drilled into me the sense that we will never be truly safe anywhere, that we must be constantly, vigilantly on guard. We may have to flee at any time — we can never know they won’t come back. (“They” is a vague group. Before the Nazis is was someone else — my grandmother’s ancestors were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition — and so, the thinking goes, someday it will be someone else again.) My mother has literally said to me, on several occasions, “The US government might turn against the Jews.” I think it’s misleading to call this brainwashing, a la Valerie*** in the “Taking A Theory” thread. This is not brainwashing, this is survival. My great-grandfather was made fun of as a paranoid pessimist when he started telling his family and friends he thought they soon wouldn’t be safe in Bulgaria. But he was right, and if he’d been less “paranoid,” I would never have been born. So, as absurd as some of the things I’ve been told may be, I take them seriously. (They’re not a justification for current appalling mistreatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, and my family has never used them that way.)
* Me and one other kid. Both of us are gay. I don’t think this is a coincidence.
** North American Federation of Temple Youth.
*** I know she wasn’t referring to this, exactly, but it’s similar.
Though I have very religious (Conservadox, I’d call them) paternal grandparents, my parents raised me in Reform synagogues. (Most of this was during the ’90s, BTW.) I started attending Hebrew School in kindergarten, but most of the first three years was pretty banal stuff. We learned very basic Hebrew–I was bothered by the fact that we never even reached the end of the alphabet each year, and had to start again with alaf the next year. We sang songs, learned about the holidays and a few other biblical stories, did lots of arts and crafts type stuff. I know we made cookies in the shape of Israel one year, but to me it just felt like another activity like making marshmallow menorahs or dreidls or whatever.
Things got more serious around third grade, when our synagogue required that everyone who wanted to be bar/bat mitzvahed attended twice a week. Hebrew School was then broken up into a Hebrew session and Biblical/History session, and we attended modified services every Sunday. The cooking/crafts/singing aspects continued to some extent. Hebrew lessons were pretty much free of political content, and I wouldn’t describe the “social studies” aspect as indoctrination, either. (Granted, I have ADD and wasn’t paying attention half the time, anyway.) We did talk a bit about Israel’s history, from a pro-Zionist bent, but it didn’t really take up that much time, or if it did, it didn’t make much of an impression on me, aside from one special “current events” session in which I was told that the media was biased against Israel and didn’t show shots of Palestinian adults attacking Israeli soldiers.
But to me personally, the extended unit we did on Sephardic Jews during the Golden Age in Spain made much more of an impression, possibly because I found out that one of my grandmothers is Sephardic. They did screen a very pro-Zionist movie about Israel’s founding–I know the movie is iconic, but I don’t remember the name. Nor anything else about it, since I pretty much spaced out after the first fifteen minutes. I doubt my classmates were much more enthralled by the three-hour long movie. In terms of movies screened during Hebrew school, I much preferred “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Fievel Goes West,” and the episode of the Wonder Years where Paul has his bar mitzvah.
There were a few Holocaust presentations, but that was a relatively minor part of the curriculum. I heard more about the Holocaust in public school (about 25% Jewish.) And by sixth grade, most of Hebrew school was all about preparing for the b’nai mitzvah, anyway. Like most American synagogues, we were encouraged to do the “plant a tree in Israel” thing. With my family’s encouragement, they gave me the money to plant a tree in memory of my deceased grandfather. Even that was framed more as a way to do something good for the environment and pay respect to your deceased relatives. Now, though, I realize it was problematic to frame the issue this way while completely glossing over the colonized state of Palestinians. Still, all things considered, I hardly characterize my Hebrew school experience as indoctrination. My synagogue also emphasized tzedakah, tikkun olam, and social justice. T’Bshvat celebrations were my introductions to environmentalism, really.
As a teen my family moved and went to a new synagogue. Having already been bat mitzvahed, I was less involved with that, but this synagogue emphasized liberal values even more. Our cantor is openly gay and heavily involved with the local LGBT movement. Both of our rabbis (one of whom is a woman) commonly preach liberal positions in their sermons, which is sometimes alienating to the 8-12% Republican membership, and even my dad on occasion, a moderate Democrat. Our rabbi has also promoted organizations which strive for the two-state solution.
Four years ago I was a counselor for our synagogue’s ten-day sleep-away camp. In addition to normal camp activities, we had regular services, which were heavily song-based, and singing circles which generally included Hebrew folk songs and the occasional secular number. As far as I can recall, the songs were more about celebrating God and living by the Torah, not Zionism.
We even had an activity for older campers (ages 12-14) loosely titled Solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in 30 minutes. The concept is objectively absurd, but was intended to get the kids thinking about these issues. The kids were in groups of nine. Three people represented Israel, three represented Palestinians, and three were the U.N. Now most of the campers were resistant to the activity, on the grounds that they shouldn’t have to do anything “educational” at camp. Many of them whined and kind of descended into anarchy. But some of the kids did take it seriously, and ended up presenting possible (very over-simplified) solutions to the conflict. As one fellow counselor said to me, “Sure, some of my girls were talking about blowing up the UN, but at least they were thinking about the issues and trying to understand the complexities of it.” The concept of the activity was a very good one, I think, if the venue wasn’t optimal.
All of these rambling recollections are meant to say that my experiences in Reform Jewish communities have not indoctrinated me with militant Zionism, nor did they bludgeon me over the head with the Holocaust, and I chafe at such descriptions of the American Jewish community, which is far from a monolithic entity. As someone who appreciates my Jewish education now–even though I grumbled about it at the time–I feel as though some of the generalizations in the previous thread were rather unfair. My Jewish upbringing was about community, not mindless indoctrination.
I’d bet this was “Exodus,” which, in addition to glossing over a whole lot, also features a scene of Paul Newman sneaking through an Arab neighborhood by putting on an Arab head covering and “blending in.” He’s got blond hair, blue eyes, and stands at least a head taller than everyone else in the scene.
My grandfather used to tell me to give him a hug “with an oy.” My grandparents had framed, knit things on the wall that depicted the Western Wall. I always took those to be religious – certianly not Zionist. Once my grandfather got upset with Robert Novak on CNN “because Novak is originally a Jewish name,” but it took me a long time to make sense of that. At the time I had no idea what Novak had even said. Grandpa watched the news constantly. I remember him watching during the first intifada (I think, though I could have been younger), but he didn’t say a thing about it to me, and I didn’t really care what he thought about it. And that’s really about as close to indoctrination as I ever got.
As I said in my piece at Racialicious, I was raised very secular (and my mother only seriously dated Catholics). About twice, we lit the menorah for Chanukkah – with paper napkins over our heads. Thing is, I can’t go backwards from here. I can’t unassimilate (even though my wife, raised as Buddhist in Korea, has taken an interest in Judaism). And yet I still understand myself as Jewish. I want anti-antisemitism to work for me, too.
Don’t spread this around, because I’m trying to incorporate it into a short story I’m working on and I kind of need that Pulitzer, but the first Seder dinner I remember was in my dad’s Dodge Caravan in the parking lot of a KFC. It was his visitation night, and my mom wasn’t letting him into the house (their divorce was… messy) and I guess he didn’t want to do it with other people around. He told me and my sister the story of the exodus while we ate fried chicken.
He also gave us these two children’s books – one about Passover, and one about these two Israelite children guarding a clay vase with a flame coming out the top. I remember the flame was in the shape of Hebrew letters (my dad now speculates that it spelled chai), and they were taking it somewhere. Was it the story of the Maccabees? A generic Hanukkah story? Something else completely? My dad has no idea what the book was called or what happened to it, so I’ve been searching for it for several years now.
That, a couple of menorah-lightings, and an Irish Catholic boyfriend who declared me un-Jewish because of my mother, was my Jewish education growing up.
I didn’t grow up Jewish: I’m a convert.
In high school (in the late 1970s) we learned about the Holocaust in history class, and watched some movie about it (I don’t remember which movie, but it had actual footage of a camp liberation). I remember a couple of specific people who I knew were Jews–one a close friend, the other not (out of a graduating class of 545 with 1,600 total in our high school).
In 11th grade I took a comparative religions class (elective) in which we spent a week on Judaism. That was the beginning of my conversion, really! I’d rejected Christianity a few years before (my father’s family are Jehovah’s Witnesses, my mother’s family a not-particularly-observant mix of Episcopalian and Catholic). So during 5 hours of lecture and discussion, plus some reading and homework, we covered the basics (that there are 613 commandments, some history, the 3 big denominations, Ashkenaz and Sephardic, acts instead of beliefs).
Then I took a year-long conversion course after high school.
I went to Hebrew school 3x a week, 2 days after school and Sunday mornings for many years. The good: it got me out of the house. The bad: many of the teachers were there simply because they were holocaust survivors and they weren’t happy about teaching us. The kids knew it didn’t count as much as regular school and didn’t take it seriously, making it difficult for the teachers. The classes were held at a day-school & we sat in other kids’ desks. It was a labour-zionist school and we studied Yiddish before we learned Hebrew. We also studied the Chumash from a text that was in Hebrew with no English translation. Over about 6 years, we never got past Shmot (Exodus). It wasn’t a superb education, but I had 2 outstanding teachers there. One was a poet. The other was the principal of the school. With him we read Yiddish literature (in the original) and studied it as literature. I still remember how excited I was around age 11 or 12 as he showed us how themes were developed and the significance of magical-realist characters in Kiddush Hashem by Sholom Asch. He wasn’t young then and when my first novel was published he was gone, and I could never tell him what wonderful memories I have of his class. He was also a writer, something I didn’t know then. One of his books of short stories has been translated into English and it’s terrific: The Far Side of the River by Jacob Zipper. It’s out of print now but if you can find it, it’s definitely worth reading.