The father brings his son into the school, wrapped in his Tzitzit,
eyes covered for fear he will learn bad ways. In the school, he does
not even have a ball to tempt him into the other, secular world. Rather,
he must learn the ways of his forefathers, first learning the aleph bet
and slowly immersing himself in the words of Torah and the rest of
tradition. By the time a child is six, he will have learned all of
berashit and shemot (genesis and exodus) by heart. He learns the words as
well as the commentary associated with it. And the time he is bar
mitzvah age, he know the tanach as well as Talmud and Mishna by heart.
Then, it's off to yeshiva to do the real learning and debating. Although
I'm really not sure what they learn there...maybe ,rabbinic commentary?
Regardless, this knowledge comes from today's visit to Mea
Shearim, which it turns t is much smaller than I initially realized. The
neighborhood itself is a cross section of the ultra-orthodox world,
representing Haredim, Litvaks (ultra orthodox from Lithuania),
mitnagdim, and chasidim. Each group has their own special way of
dressing and interacting with the general public (as Michael Marmur said
at the beginning of the year, there are many different shades of
black). Some may avoid a female gaze while others simply want to inform.
The neighborhood itself is full of small alleyways and men coming
in and out of the synagogue all throughout the day. At all times, for
the most part, there is a minyan, ten people, prepared to daven
together. The mikvah being located right next door is convenient, and
offers the members of the community their daily necessity of cleansing
(and gossip) before they are ready for the day. Directly across the
street are two schools, one lLitvak and one Haredi. We entered the Litvak
one and were immediately assaulted by loud screaming. Turns out the
children were on a break and playing on their playground located in the
dirt center of the three story building. The building , with rooms on
each side, contains classrooms the size of a small dorm room, with as
many as thirty children stuffed into benches, seated with the Chumash on
the thin table in front of them. They chant along in unison with the
rabbi, their teacher, as he translates the Hebrew or Aramaic into
Yiddish. All the learning is in Yiddish, although outside of the
classroom it would seem everyone speaks Hebrew.
The synagogue itself is a work of beauty, with the ceiling painted
in the style brought over from Lithuania, with the names of the months
on one half of the ceiling and the names of the twelve tribes of Israel
on the other. Next to each is either the zodiac sign associated with
the month or the symbol associated with the specific tribe. The room
itself is set up for hevruta study, with benches facing each other and a
table in between. A few pairs of old men and young boys sat opposite
one another, engaging in reading and dialogue, but the room a mostly
empty. However, from the looks of the books strewn across the tables,
Torah study or Talmud was a regular practice in this space.
Most surprising to me was our ability to walk into this building,
no questions asked. Although we were with a former member of Mea
Shearim, I still didn't expect to be able to walk in and peek around.
Yet peek we did, as the children peeked back at us from behind their
hands. The wide array of white, blue, gray, and black that stared back
at us was unsurprising, but for its openness.
The principal came up to us on the stairs and started talking
about the school, about the importance of teaching these children from a
young age and what exactly is taught. It turns out that the children
learn math and grammar, but only at a young age and only until a basic
level of understanding. They learn how to add subtract, multiply and
divide, using fractions and decimals, but after that there is no need.
They will be learning for most of their lives and therefore don't need
to engage in what the rabbi called לימודי חול, or secular learning.
Previous to this encounter, we passed a girls school, which is
supposedly one of the last remaining schools of its kind. It is taught
only in Yiddish and goes up until the ae of 16 or 17, when a girl is
suitable to start finding a husband, or being attached to her chosen
match. The school's main purpose is to teach a girl what she will need
to know in married life: sewing, cooking, knitting, laundry, family
expenses. She may learn a very selected version of history, and maybe
math, but there will be no Talmud study. Not funded by the government,
this is a very extreme version of ultra-orthodox education. The more
popular kind of learning for females is at beit yaakov, which is
partially government funded and therefore teaches more of the secular
subjects.
Showing up in my jeans skirt past my knees and long sleeved purple
shirt, I thought I was dressed modestly. It turns out that it wasn't
what they consider modest, due to the colors in my clothing and the
length of my skirt, not to mention a small part of my chest showing.
Although I am aware that this is the lifestyle that has been chosen, as a
way to remain connected to what they consider the true way of
practicing Judaism, I became immediately sure that this was not the
world I wanted to live in, nor was it the world in which I was prepared
to raise a family. Jewish values are important to me and always will be
important, but so is the modern world. Technology is an asset in the
world (for the most part) and I believe that as Jews, but also as
people, we have a responsibility to participate with the rest of the
world in making this a better world in which to live. If they want the
messiah or messianic age to come, how is studying Torah going to bring
that about? What will the words on the page do to make this world
better? Studying Torah and learning Judaics is a way of looking at the
world, of developing a belief system, but there is more to life than
that. It is our responsibility to take what we learned and then go out
into the world and affect change from our own actions. We must, as
Ghandi said, be the change we wish to see in the world. Only then can we
start to see what a messianic age might look like and how we can be a
part of it.
Being a reform rabbi may not be the path I need to take to get to
affecting that change. However, people will always need counselors and
therapists, people who are both spiritual and secular guides as they
traverse the confusing world. That in and of itself is helping make the
world a better place, both directly and indirectly. Indirectly, it is
helping people find the greater wholeness inside of them to do good and
directly it is helping them believe in a power that is greater than
themselves. Prayer is a way to connect, to feel a community around you.
And that allow one to know that he or she is not alone in the task of
making the world better. Is it my destiny to be a rabbi...that is yet to
be seen. But it is my destiny to help others and touch the lives of
those around me. And that I am looking forward to doing.
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