A Call to Action

This week's post is from Leah Zimmerman, Director of Youth Education.

 
Al Shloshah D’varim Ha’olam Omed, Al HaTorah, al HaAvodah v’al G’milut Chasadim.  The world stands on three things Torah, Avodah and G’milut Chasadim.   This quote from the Mishnah frames how we organize the different areas of Jewish knowledge and experience that form the core of our Beit Sefer curriculum.  You can see these areas represented in our logo: 

"Torah" refers to all the textual learning that emanates from the Torah scroll and the other important Jewish texts that have followed.  “Avodah” literally “work” refers to the many mitzvot that we follow and the acts that we do to participate in Jewish rituals.  "G’milut Chasadim" refers to “righteous acts” the many ways that we bring goodness into the world through Tzedakah, taking care of others, Tikkun Olam (fixing the world), and social action.

Sunday, as I walked around school I was so excited to see the integration of learning of Torah and G’milut Chasadim.   Some lessons had explicitly been designed to talk about Jewish values like the lesson on Bikkur Cholim (visiting the sick) in Gan and the lessons on Tikkun Olam in Kitah Dalet and Kitah Zayin.  But, even some Torah lessons like in Kitah Bet and Kitah Gimmel touched on the way that our Biblical heroes sometimes made choices towards advocating for others (Kitah Bet - Abraham standing up for the good people of the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah and in Kitah Gimmel - the Hebrew midwives Shifrah and Puah refusing to obey Pharoah’s order to throw the Israelite babies into the Nile.) 

 Here a Kitah Zayin student reads to the class facts about people who are hungry as the class learns why we do social action to help the hungry.

 I was already reflecting on how wonderful it was to see the way our teachers weave Jewish learning and Jewish behavior together when I encountered the same theme in the 8^th/9^th grade class.  As part of a study on prophets, the class was exploring Isaiah’s call to the Israelites to be good people.   Isaiah rejects the idea of doing Avodah, the Jewish rituals, without including righteous behavior.  

This made me think of how at TBI we connect Social action with many of our holidays.  We run our food drive during the High Holy Days; we have our 7^th grade Mac n Cheese drive at Purim.   It also underlined for me the importance of presenting these three pillars of Jewish learning as integral parts of each other. It isn’t only because we have wonderful teachers that these threads were entwined in the lessons, but because Judaism engages us in many ways to grapple with social issues. 

What are the Jewish moments that engage you in thinking about social action?