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A D’Var For the First Day of School

August 9, 2010 By punktorah

School started today for many kids across the country. The lucky few of us are still enjoying our summer vacation.

Judaism puts a strong emphasis on education, and it seems appropriate to ask, “can the Torah teach us anything about secular education?”

I’m not an education expert, and I will not claim I am. Nor am I a particularly political person. But I will say that I believe Judaism does have a lot of values that the non-Jewish, secular education community should adopt…not because they are good “Jewish” values, but because they are good values to begin with.

Keep the Material Meaningful and Relevant – the phrase “d’var Torah” means “teaching on the Torah”. A d’var doesn’t involve just telling a story, but giving it a modern understanding that is applicable to our daily lives. So often, teachers teach in a way that does not relate their material to anything that I would consider to be part of normal life. We end up valuing the teacher who can relate geometry to Rock Band or Charles Dickens to the newest Will Ferrell movie because it takes the boring, the irrational, the complex and the confusing and puts it into a context that makes complete sense. I doubt that Amelek would have much meaning today if it weren’t for those teachers of Torah who find a way to make it meaningful.

Scholarly Debate – I’ve gotten into a lot of arguments with teachers. Half the time I was right, the other half I was wrong. The teachers who mean the most to me, looking back, are the ones who allowed me to argue with them. They weren’t afraid of the challenge and more importantly, they knew that by exercising my mind (even when I was dead wrong), they were setting me down the path to being a smarter adult. Jews believe in this intellectual back-and-forth, the most notable hallmark being the Talmud, which is nothing but a bunch of dead rabbis arguing about the finer points of Judaism.

Be Flexible to the Needs and Skills of Others – Each tribe had their own skill set, from being the ritual priests to the construction of the Mishkan to fighting in battle. At no time in the Torah does Moses say, “OK Levites, you’re doing great with the whole Priestly Class thing, but we really need to focus more on your basket making and pottery.” So much of education is about teaching something new and outside of someone’s boundaries, that we forget the importance of helping people excel at what they are already inclined toward. As an adult, I spend absolutely no time voluntarily doing things I don’t want to do. So why is that the bed rock of education as we know it?

I hope everyone enjoys their first day of school. Kul Tuv!

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Rants Tagged With: back to school, back to school 2010, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, D'var Torah, darshan yeshiva, education reform, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, reform education

The D’Var Torah For Tax Day

April 15, 2010 By punktorah

For some, April 15th is a scary day: tax day in the USA.

This year, I owed nearly $1,700 to the Federal and State government. I had been self-employed in the previous year, and self-employed people get a “double tax” hit  from paying their share and “employers” share of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

I have to admit that I was pretty angry to have to pay that much to the IRS and I posted a comment about it on Facebook. Nothing political, just simply the message, “Dear President Obama, please spend my $1,700 wisely. I know I could have.”

What happened after that was a flood of Jews discussing Jewish law and taxation. My “liberal” friends noting that the Torah says sacrifices should be based on what one can afford (justification for an Income Tax), while my more conservative and libertarian friends made the argument for a National Sales Tax based on the idea that wealthy people spend more, and thus would pay more into the system.

I’m not interested in talking about politics. Sure, we could bat the ol’ Talmud ball back and forth on everything from school vouchers to zoning laws. What I’m more interested in is the fact that I posted a completely non-Jewish comment, and immediately what came to mind was the Torah.

Regardless of how one feels about any political issue, it is amazing that we can immediately look to Judaism for the answer. We’ll never agree on certain things (in fact, most of the Talmud is a big disagreement), but at least we’re all looking at the same source for the answer. -Patrick Aleph

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: april 15th, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, D'var Torah, darshan yeshiva, Fun, income tax, obama, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, taxes, usa politics

The D'var Torah For Spring Break

April 6, 2010 By punktorah

The weather is warm and the beach is calling: Spring Break is here! A week off from school, work, or whatever normal life issues plague you.

Judaism is filled with “breaks”. The holiest day in the Jewish calendar is Shabbat, and that is a day entirely dedicated to doing nothing. So do we need more breaks?

If you ask many Jewish people, what they really want is a break from Judaism.

Last month, I attended the first national conference of Birthright Israel Next. An extension of the famous (some would say infamous) organization that funds trips for Jewish college students to Israel. The goal of Next: to help young Jews expand their connection to Israel, deepen their commitment to Jewish life and to form a Jewish community.

In a gorgeous hotel in New Orleans, I hung out with Jewish activists from around the country. These are people who spend every day of their life working on making Jewish life relevant to their peers. And what I learned, more than anything from these people, is that Judaism can be really tiresome.

“By the time Shabbat arrives, I don’t want to do anything Jewish”, said one woman. She spends all day in a JCC office. Her break: hanging out with her non-Jewish friends. “Doing Jewish” every day just sucks the energy right out of her.

If anyone would want a secular holiday from the Jewish tradition, it would be this group. But when I asked most of these people what they were doing for Spring Break, many said they were going on “service work” and “alternative break” trips: giving up Spring Break to go to places like Haiti and Africa to help build communities. Others were just planning on going home, to visit family.

It seems this is the power of Judaism: to take something like Spring Break, the ultimate excuse to destroy your spirit (neshama) through drugs, booze and promiscuity, and turn it into an opportunity for havurah (community) and repairing the world (tikkun olam).

To this I say, “Am Yisroel Chai”: long live the Jewish people!

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: beach, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, D'var Torah, darshan yeshiva, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Punk, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, spring break, Torah, vacation

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