Jewish Lives, Jewish Learning
As we are talking more about the type of classes that we would like to offer at Der Nister, I am once again examining some of the basic premises of what we are doing with Jewish education. Our focus is entirely on educating Jewish adults, though we reach adults at a wide range of moments in their lives. While there is a large body of work that has been done on the education of Jewish children, very little research has been done on educating Jewish adults. A book that is new to me, but not so new to the world, Jewish Lives, Jewish Learning: Adult Jewish Learning in Theory and Practice, by Diane Tickton Schuster, is proving to be very helpful in my thinking.
Previously, I talked at length about the way that the obligation to educate (male) children has had a powerful effect on the economic life of the Jewish people. In the post-Enlightenment period, it is easier to use the historic attitude towards education only to the Orthodox community, although that community has come to embrace the education of females over the past 125 years. It seems to me that for those outside of the Orthodox world, the cultural mindset that has applied to Jewish learning has shifted towards competency in the secular world with dazzling results. However, that has produced a problematic side effect – the “bad Jew.”
I never hear anyone talking about other people as “bad Jews.” The term is used for self-identification, sometimes with pride, but often with shame and embarrassment. The shame and embarrassment comes from a recognition that the individual has grown as an adult and gained competency and self-understanding in many parts of their lives, but that they realize that the maturity of their Jewish selves is stunted. (As a rabbi, when I hear this phrase I wince a little, feeling like my presence caused the pain.) Often this lag is sufficiently thorough that they lack understanding of what might make them feel competent in the ways that they feel competent in other parts of their lives.
For today, I will leave off a discussion of the whys and hows that get so many people to this point as adults. Some of the problems arise early on, but the problems really seem to balloon in adolescence, a vital period of identity formation. Despite these problems, the issue of Jewish identity is constantly churning for most Jews due to the competency paradox. Even those who might altogether reject Judaism can be frustrated with the pediatric quality of their rejection and desire an adult sophistication in their rejection.
Der Nister, as our friend Rabbi Patricia Fenton pointed out to us, is a Jewish Outreach project. By Jewish Outreach we are referring to a strategy where the organization focuses on serving those outside of its core group, where the plan is to reach the unserved. In the Jewish world, this generally means Orthodox groups trying to reach out to non-Orthodox Jews and convert them to Orthodoxy. The wisdom in Rabbi Fenton’s understanding of Der Nister is that we are reaching out to Jews with a hope of transforming them. Unlike our Orthodox counterparts, we do this without a preconceived notion of what specific beliefs and interests will be if our efforts are successful. Rather, our goal is to aid our fellow Jews in reaching a matured engagement with their Jewish identity and a feeling of Jewish competency that matches (or exceeds) their sense of competency in the secular world.
In order to get where we want to go there are many fine details that need to be attended to. Here I want to mention one of the starting places: recognizing where people are in the process of reaching a feeling of competency. In Jewish Lives, Jewish Learning, Schuster builds on the work of Mary Belensky, et al. in their book Women’s Ways of Knowing to explain the different places that adults are when they come to Jewish learning (Schuster believes that the learning theory in Women’s Ways of Knowing is more broadly true that the authors claimed). The theory describes five different kinds of “knowers.”
Silent Knowers are like the child in the Haggadah who doesn’t know how to ask, but with a little resentful alienation: “I’ll attend the seder but I won’t feel comfortable asking what it means.”
Received Knowers are like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, “Na’aseh ve-Nishma: I will do and I will hear.” : “I will go to the lecture about Pesach and I will do all the things the Rabbi says so that I can do the seder the right way.”
Subjective Knowers do their own research and rely on their own intuition: “The only meaningful way to do the seder is to go to my parent’s home and do what we have always done. My gut tells me that that’s what will work best for everyone.”
Procedural Knowers are analytical. They are aware, tolerant and interested in the views of others: “I’ll learn Hebrew and compare different haggadot so that I can participate more fully at the seder.”
Constructed Knowers develop their own expertise and push at the limits of their own perspectives, reconsidering the ways that they had looked at ideas earlier. The are willing to expose their ideas to the critical judgment of others by teaching: “I will lead the seder and will give my interpretation of what each item on the seder plate symbolizes for Jews today.”
In Schuster’s rephrasing of the work in Women’s Ways of Knowing, the Constructed Knower is the highest level of knowing. I agree that this capacity is the highest capacity level of knowing, but in the real world it is better to act as a Procedural Knower in some moments and a Constructed Knower in others.
As teachers it behooves us to make a serious effort to understand where we find people. We make that effort effort, but I think that we could do a better job at times matching our understanding of the person with the learning situation that we are offering. For Jews lifelong education is a way of life. We have learned from the folks at UCLA Extension that the majority of the students in their adult education programs are Jewish. Working your way up to a strong level of competency as a Jewish learner is not an end unto itself. It is a foundation for further learning, deeper self-knowledge and a balanced integration of one’s Jewish and secular identity.
Please come and learn with us.
