Yikes!

My Next Award Travel

As a frequent flyer on American Airlines ("a member of the oneworld alliance"), can I use my miles to get a seat on the Pope's plane?

CAJE from the Bottom Up

[cross-posted to TAPBB]

A lot has been said and written about the recent cancellation of what would-have-been CAJE's 34th annual conference. I have my own thoughts about what caused this to happen, though it seems clear that the conference's non-existence this summer is mostly about financial management and the current economy, and little to do with the conference itself.

That being said, the absence of CAJE 34 presents a unique opportunity to look at the conference from a distance and to think out loud about what made CAJE great, what will make it great in the future, and what we can do to develop a conference that reflects that vision.

Rabbi Beth Nichols, an educator who is assistant rabbi at Temple Israel of New Rochelle, NY, taught the best session at last summer's CAJE 33 conference in Burlington, Vermont.

Beth's session was entitled "Evolving Bulletin Boards: Constructing the Big Ideas on Our Walls." A few nights beforehand, she was up late putting together sample bulletin boards. She brought pictures, she brought handouts, and she shared her ideas about how to make bulletin boards that "help students construct knowledge throughout the year." Beth spent her session sharing her own ideas — best practices for using bulletin boards as curricular tools — and soliciting discussion from colleagues who also have given some thought to using the walls of their classrooms in interesting ways.

CAJE used to be a conference full of sessions like Beth's. It was about professionals and not-so-professionals in the field of Jewish education spending time to learn with each other and from each other. But things have changed, and CAJE has become a "top-down" sort of conference.

There are plenty of examples of the "top-down" model in conferences for professionals in Jewish education. Here's how it works: An esteemed expert (a university professor, a government official with experience in the mideast peace process, a well-published author, etc.) stands in front a lecture hall full of people and imparts wisdom about his or her particular subject of expertise before taking questions from the audience. These speakers are not necessarily invested members of the gathered community; rather, they are hired experts who are flown in to deliver a keynote address and maybe sit on a panel. In these sorts of conferences, participants are, for the most part, passive. They are the recipients of knowledge and expertise.

In the "bottom-up" model, things work a lot differently. The classroom teacher's expertise is valued right alongside the university professor's. Every voice has a chance to speak and present, and every attendee is there to listen and learn.

Let me be very clear. The world of Jewish education needs "top-down" opportunities for teachers and educators to learn from experts. We need experts — people who've done research, who've studied the field, who have a breadth and depth of experience that can be shared — because experts help us to do our jobs better.

And there's plenty of room for experts in the "bottom-up" model. For many teachers and educators, CAJE is an opportunity to learn with an impressive array of top-notch educators and academics. There's something thrilling about the interplay between demographers, professors, idealogues and on-the-front-lines classroom teachers. We have a lot to gain from that relationship. It's just that we need to return to a conference model that is conducive for real free exchange, dialogue, and learning. I'm advocating for a conference that revolves a lot more around workshops and a lot less around keynotes.

We already have lots of conferences based on the "top-down" model. Annually, NATE and the JEA hold conferences where they invite experts to lecture and teach to assembled educational leadership. So does RAVSAK, and so do a number of other nationally-publicized conferences and "institutes" held annually. Local bureaus of Jewish education host community-wide in-services where local teachers can hone their skills. In a recent JTA article, Jonathan Sarna suggested that CAJE should be allowed to whither away because other organizations are basically doing the same work, sometimes with more innovation. And he's right, because he understands that CAJE has become just another "top-down" conference where teachers and educators can come and listen to the experts.

Recently, I was sitting at a table at the RAVSAK conference with acclaimed artist Mordechai Rosenstein. Mordechai was lamenting the withering of CAJE. "All those folks used to be the subversive ones. They were out to buck the system. Now they are the system." He's right. The "bottom-up" generation that created CAJE went and became experts. And the conference has slowly transitioned to become "top-down."

CAJE used to be a grassroots organization that was all about being "bottom-up." It's time for a new generation of leadership to re-envision the conference and re-adopt that role. Here's my plan to make that happen:

1. CAJE, as a conference, should cease to exist. It should be replaced by a new conference. I'd call it NGAJE (pronounced "engage") — A New Generation for Alternatives in Jewish Education.

2. The new conference should feature "experts" in Jewish education, but those experts should be encouraged to teach lots of workshops and participatory sessions, not deliver keynote addresses. Conference leaders should be charged with protecting the balance between bringing in established experts and providing opportunities for everyone to teach and learn. The new conference should be a place for new Jewish educational leadership to emerge.

3. The new conference should start out small, be volunteer led, and be extremely cost efficient in every possible way.

4. The new conference should be without specialized "tracks" or "conferences within a conference." Again, the conference should be about engaging, discussing, and exchanging ideas. It should not be a place where participants come to hear experts talk, or where they can seclude themselves within a particular bubble.

5. The new conference should not need to be profitable enough to cover the expense of maintaining a full-time staff and year-round initiatives.

6. The new conference should be totally inclusive. Anyone who wants to assume a leadership role should be afforded the opportunity, and anyone who wants to be invested should be part of the dreaming and planning process.

That's what I know... for now. There's probably a lot here I'm naïve about. But I think that might be the point. I think we need to dream big to develop a new national conference for people who are deeply invested in Jewish education. I'm very interested in engaging in discussion, in hearing what others have to say, and in being part of a vanguard that shapes the next generation's version of CAJE.

The Torch Has Been Passed

I'm in San Francisco right now, representing the company I work for at a conference. This evening, as I returned to my hotel after dinner, the bellman held the door for me and asked me a question.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?"

"I can't wait," I said.

"It's our turn." he told me. He was looking me right in the eye. A white male about my age, stocky with a well-trimmed goatee. I looked back at him.

"You're about my age," he continued. I nodded. He seemed to take it as an indication that I was open to a conversation. "We put him in to office, and now it's our generation's turn. They don't believe that we can do it. We need to show them that we believe in hard work, and that we can solve the big problems. I can't wait for tomorrow."

It reminded me of something I heard a couple of months ago, when I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Forty eight years ago, Kennedy was inaugurated. At his library, I stood transfixed in front of a video monitor as he looked into my eyes and spoke to me.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

The torch has been passed, and now it's our turn. For the past several months, Barack Obama has taught us that, yes, we can. We could, and we did. But tomorrow marks the beginning of the next chapter. The torch is in our hands, and we have to ask ourselves...

What are we going to do with it?

Now that we have that torch in our hands, now is the time for us to make a difference as a generation, to prove to our parents and grandparents that we're ready to lead.

Now is the time to close Guantanamo and tell the world that the United States of America does not tolerate torture.

Now is the time to make sure that every American has affordable health care.

Now is the time to say that the richest country on earth will not continue to allow the rising epidemics of childhood obesity and malnutrition to take over our nation.

Now is the time to say that all citizens deserve to marry the ones they love.

Now is the time to tell Israel that America stands with her, and that we need to work together to find a better way to respond to terrorism.

Now is the time to be a leader among nations by cutting our greenhouse gas emissions and halting the march of global warming.

Now is the time to look around and realize that life is not about us, but is about what we can do to improve our communities, our nation, and our world.

Tomorrow, as we watch as Barack Obama is sworn in as President of the United States of America, we should be awed and inspired by the enormity of the moment, by the enormity of the crowd who gathered to watch him take the oath of office, by the enormity of the presidency. But we must also be humbled by the enormity of the challenge before us. We live in a very broken world. Our generation worked hard to elect Obama because we believed that his leadership would empower us as a nation to fix that brokenness. The torch is in our hands, and we must not fail.

The hotel bellman was still looking me straight in the eye. "I can't wait for tomorrow," he repeated. "Tomorrow is a new day."

"Yeah, it is," I answered.

An Open Letter to the Gay Community

Dear colleagues, classmates, friends, and teachers,

I'm writing you two days after the election and the passage of Proposition 8 to express my outrage, my disappointment, and my sorrow. I'm also writing to tell you that I'm ashamed. And I'm writing to apologize for what we, the citizens of the State of California, did to you.

I've been a Californian and an American since I was born 28 years ago, and for most of that time I've been proud to be both. Today, and for the past few days, when I think about being either of those things, I feel nothing but shame. We did something wrong, and we did it to you, and for that you deserve an apology. (You also deserve to have this injustice righted, but for now that's not in my power. All I can offer is an apology.)

I'm sorry that voters in this state — in my state — voted to take away rights that were just recently granted to you, and that no one should have had to grant to you because you are human beings and Americans and Californians, and you deserve the same freedoms as your heterosexual neighbors.

I'm sorry that voters in this state — in my state — voted to say to you that your love is less real, and that your lifelong commitment does not deserve to be called marriage, at least not on paper in this state.

I'm sorry that voters in this state — in my state — voted to say that this is not a place of freedom and equality but of bigotry and hatred and fear.

I can't begin to understand what it must feel like to have your fellow Californians vote to deny you a basic human right, to decide that something about who you are as a human being makes you less worthy to live life like the rest of us. I would be lying if I said that I understood that kind of hurt because no one — at least no one in my own state and in my own country — has ever done something like that to me.

But I do understand what it's like to be in love with someone, and to enter into a lifelong sacred commitment to them. Today, my own marriage is worth less than it was when I was married just over five months ago. It's not that anything about my relationship to my wife has changed; if anything. our commitment is stronger than it was in May. Rather, my marriage is cheapened because the voters of the State of California chose to cheapen it.

The bigots who supported Proposition 8 believe that the institution of heterosexual marriage is threatened when two men or two women enter into holy matrimony with each other. They could not be more wrong. They do not understand freedom, and they do not understand what it means to be American.

In a place where anyone is not free, none of us are free. In a place that denies rights, none of us truly have any.

Today I am embarrassed to be married because you cannot be. But beyond that embarrassment, I realize that the legal bond represented by my marriage is less strong. In a place where some of us cannot be married, none of us are truly married.

Over two hundred years ago, George Washington wrote,

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

I used to believe that Washington was describing the United States of America, a place whose government — elected by the people and for the people — "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Since Tuesday, I've come too see his words as prescription rather than description, as a call to true Americans to stand up to bigotry and persecution.

I'm sorry that we failed to live up to President Washington's standard, and that we failed you. I didn't vote for Proposition 8, but I'm sorry I didn't do more to stop it from passing. I'm sorry I didn't shout louder and I'm sorry I didn't work harder. We have an obligation to protect each other's rights and each other's freedoms. On Tuesday, I failed to live up to that obligation. All of us did. We failed freedom, we failed our country, and we failed you.

I only hope that you can forgive me and forgive your state for this injustice. I'm sorry, and I won't let it happen again.

Sincerely,

Josh

living a dream

I'm sitting on an airplane right now on my way to Washington, D.C.

And I'm on the internet.

Thanks to GoGoWireless and American Airlines (who installed GoGo wifi equipment on some of their 767-200s), I can sit here and waste time at 35,000 feet.

This is a watershed moment in my life. There is now virtually nowhere on earth where I have to suffer the indignity, injustice, and inhumanity of being without an internet connection. I can now never be without the proper focus in tasia, never be away from all seventy-something blogs I read on a daily basis, never be away from leaving my Facebook status. I can even watch TV on Hulu or my slingbox (though the reception for those isn't great because the bandwith is kind of low).

My siblings being born. The Dodgers winning the World Series. Graduating from college and grad school. Meeting and later marrying my wife. Getting internet on an airplane.

halloween scrooge

I've written in the past about how I don't understand the appeal of Halloween because the "rituals" of the holiday seem to have no apparent purpose.

Here you have a holiday that's widely celebrated, though it's totally detached from the original reason it was celebrated. (And if it was still attached to that original meaning, no one would celebrate it.) People do all sorts of things on Halloween, but they're all meaningless.

People carve pumpkins on Halloween. What's the point?
People dress up on Halloween. Why?
People knock on people's doors and ask for candy. What kind of ridiculousness is that?

Look, if someone's celebrating Halloween because these sorts of things have meaning for them, fine. But I don't know anyone like that. People don't celebrate Halloween because they connect to the ancient Druidic rituals or because its a deep and important part of their heritage. People celebrate Halloween because... they do.

Obviously, as someone who cares a lot about Jewish holidays, I want to celebrate festivals and holy-days that have some purpose and whose rituals are connected to said purpose. Lest you think that when it comes to holidays I'm a religious extremist, I think Thanksgiving and Mother's Day are really important holidays that are worth celebrating. Mothers Day, despite being invented by Hallmark, is about appreciating someone who deserves appreciation. I can get behind that holiday.

Anyway, I'm bringing up Halloween again because (a) its coming up soon, and (b) Joel Hoffman recently wrote a sort of Jewish Halloween manifesto that came to my attention.

Hoffman argues that Halloween isn't not a Jewish holiday, by which he means that the crap some ancient Israeli Hebrew school teacher once fed him about Halloween being an anti-Semitic holiday isn't true. And even though the holiday has some pagan and Catholic roots, they've never been part of the American way of celebrating the holiday. So there's nothing about Halloween that's anti-Jewish, according to Hoffman:

...in this country Halloween was never regarded as a sectarian celebration. It wasn’t even on most American calendars until the mid-nineteenth century. When it finally did take root, it was a mixture of pranks, dress up, jack o’lanterns, and candy, none of which is un-Jewish in any way. So my grumpy Israel teacher was wrong.

Hoffman goes even further when he says that Halloween is something that Jews should get behind because it's rich with values that we agree with:

If we abandoned everything that had a disagreeable history, we’d have to give up many of our favorite Jewish rituals, too.

Whatever their non-Jewish roots, American holidays such as Thanksgiving and Halloween are now symbols of pluralism, yearly signposts advertising America’s freedom and tolerance. These holidays are an opportunity for Americans, regardless of background, to come together and share an experience. And they can even be an enormous amount of fun.

Pluralism, tolerance, community, and fun are all Jewish ideals, and I, for one, am looking forward once again to greeting bizarrely dressed children as they come to my door and ask for treats.

I have two problems with this argument.

First of all, taking on a holiday that's not part of your own religious tradition just because it has values that you might like is a silly idea. To many Americans, Christmas is a holiday that's about family, generosity, hope, and good cheer. I like all these things, and, to be honest, all those things are Jewish ideals. Does that mean Jews should celebrate Christmas? I think not. ("Ah... But Christmas is different because it's a religious Christian holiday," you say. Actually, I think its pretty comparable to Halloween, at least by Hoffman's definition. Sure... Christmas may have once been a religious holiday. And it still is for some. But should we abandon it just because it has a "disagreeable history"? To many Americans, Christmas is a secular holiday where they give presents.) I think Jews shouldn't celebrate Christmas because it's not our holiday, and because, contrary to Hoffman's argument, you can't actually separate a holiday from its history.

But to be honest, that's not why I don't celebrate Halloween. As I said above, I don't have a problem with holidays that aren't Jewish. I celebrate Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, after all. Heck... I think more people should celebrate Columbus Day and Flag Day and Veterans Day. My second problem with Hoffman's argument is that I just don't accept that Halloween is about "[p]luralism, tolerance, community, and fun." I don't celebrate Halloween -- as I said above -- because it's a dumb holiday with no real redeeming value. If it really were about "[p]luralism, tolerance, community, and fun" then I might celebrate it. But it's not. It's mostly about candy and carved pumpkins (!) and stupid rubber masks. I don't want to sit around eating candy (or sit around giving it away to kids threatening to "trick" me if I don't give it to them). I'd rather eat pumpkins then carve them. And, well... I guess I don't have a problem with rubber masks.

I have better things to do with my Friday evening, so I'll stay away from Halloween, thank you.

of shofars and vespas

This is kinda old news. But I found it today.

Maurice Kamins is a very cool guy that I know. A few weeks ago, he was on the cover of San Francisco's Jewish rag with a great story about how he makes shofars, how he loves shofars, how he thinks shofars are awesome, etc. The story is also a bit about how he's a cool guy, and mentions his daughter Rochelle. I know Maurice because Rochelle is a good friend. Because Rochelle is such a good friend, I have an original Maurice Kamins shofar of which I am very proud and very fond. It is big and pretty and it sounds amazing.

I don't have any deep commentary on the subject. I just think that Rochelle is cool ("Rochelle, by the way, is a chip off the old block: She, too, rides a motorcycle, which likely will make her one of a rare breed of biker-rabbis when she is ordained next May. Dad, meanwhile, gets quite a few stares when he rides his Vespa around town with a 36-inch kudu shofar prominently sticking out."), and that her dad is cool, and that you should read the article, which you can find here.

Challah

We finally finished unpacking all the wedding gifts, including the stand mixer. And we now live in an apartment with a decent oven. So Sara made her first challah. Two of them, actually. They were delicious... though the one with the salt was better than the one where it was forgotten. ;)

The Flower Shop on Bundy and Pico

The sign said something about "happy endings", so my wife stole my Blackberry and took a picture.

2008-10-04T06:04:23Z

Another Reason to be Excited About Nebraska

Some guy in Nebraska just grew a 1097-lb. pumpkin. Seriously.

Excited About Going to Nebraska this weekend...

...because this is what their Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, has to say about his party's vice presidential nominee:

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

"I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States."

"I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia.' That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

"I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world. I think that's just a requirement."

Jewish Athletes

From today's Wall Street Journal article about recent changes to Mark Spitz's legacy:

Mr. Spitz's undisputed stature as one the greatest Jewish athletes of all time -- he routinely makes that list, alongside baseball legends Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg -- doesn't have quite the same cachet to him. "My mother and my mother-in-law and my wife will appreciate that," he says wryly, but it's not what got him into the pool to begin with.