Gail Baker is a co-founder of The Toronto Heschel School. She is Head of School and Director of the Lola Stein Institute. Judith Leitner is a Cofounder of The Toronto Heschel School and its Director of Arts. Her book, The Judaic Arts Compendium: 150 Integrated Visual Arts Programmes, will be published shortly. Pam Medjuck Stein is the editor of think: The Lola Stein Institute Journal and a founding parent of The Toronto Heschel School. See the related article, “Transformative Jewish Education Through the Arts” here.
Keva & Kavvanah: Understanding Jewish prayer
In this program we express our understanding of Keva and Kavvanah, and we foster symbolic thinking through an art form. We renew and enrich the culture of derekh eretz in the art room. We perceive that prayer develops our self-awareness as vital individuals and as members of a learning community; that Jews pray alone in community.
In Tefillah Studies we ask, “How can we understand the nature of prayer? How can we understand Rabbi A. J. Heschel’s thoughts on Keva and Kavvanah in Jewish prayer? Where can we find these notions elsewhere in the human experience to help us clarify the act of prayer?
We begin with Rabbi Heschel’s words, quoted in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Interpreter of Jewish Prayer by Arnold Jacob Wolf:
There is a specific difficulty of Jewish prayer. There are laws – Keva: how to pray, when to pray, what to pray. There are fixed times, fixed ways, fixed texts. On the other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul, a matter of inner devotion – Kavvanah. In this way, Jewish prayer is guided by two opposite principles: order and outburst, regularity and spontaneity, uniformity and individuality, law and freedom, a duty and a prerogative, empathy and self-expression, insight and sensitivity, creed and faith. These principles are two poles about which Jewish prayer revolves.
While students explore the ideas Keva and Kavvanah in Tefillah Studies, in Art Class they investigate color and the elements of design. They study the artist Mark Rothko, who said, “I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on” (www.theartstory.org). The class explores Rothko’s approach, learning how complementary colors energize, while altering tones and shades can differentiate strength and mood. Once the learning goals of the component disciplines are met, the study of prayer meets Abstract Expressionism in the art room, where students create a large color field painting. Following Rothko they experiment with how abstract composition and color express ideas. The practice correlates with the themes of duality and conflict in Keva and Kavvanah and students explore through their paintings and written artist statements.
We assess student ability to engage in meaningful discussions, to bridge information from diverse areas of learning, and to connect personal artwork to models from art history. Students must express their understanding of symbolic thinking and Rav Heschel’s thoughts on Keva and Kavvanah in Jewish prayer through their painting and artist statement; they must show comprehension of Abstract Expressionism and produce an extended color wheel; they must elaborate on ideas, and employ diverse art materials; they must persist during a directed lesson, work independently and remain engaged in personal artwork; they must also apply the principles of derekh eretz to the collective learning experience. Through abstract art they evince the solitude and collegiality of Jewish prayer.
Jewish values through drama and music in Grade 8
Individual and social responsibility: is there a tension?
We often begin Judaic Arts class with a rhythm circle designed to build the group’s cohesion and we conduct these opening games with music and rhythm in an atmosphere of joy and trust. One student begins a clapping pattern and the student beside him picks up the beat, emulates the pattern and then adds to it. To get it right, the students must pay attention to what they see and hear, and accept the pattern they are given. The activity helps develop respect and the values of derekh eretz. Students quickly learn that their actions matter and that group success depends on individual success. We notice this together as a Jewish value, and, for example, we remember how Mordekhai and Esther suppressed their individual needs to save the Jewish community.
Students can understand that their choices in life are predicated on Jewish ethics and values. The class studies Heschel as an activist for social justice, a brilliant scholar of Jewish tradition, and a profound religious thinker on the human condition. We learn that Heschel believed humanity’s greatest sin to be the sin of indifference. In the (1973) interview called Eternal Light, Heschel said, “As God strives for meaning and justice, let man strive for meaning and justice.”
The students learn that Heschel exerted important social and political influence on his times, and, most importantly, that he lived his life by the values that he espoused. Through stories, poems and speeches, we study the plight of the black people in America during the 1950s and 1960s, Heschel’s collaboration with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the American Civil Rights movement, and learn that King drew inspiration for civil rights from the Hebrew prophets. We discuss fundamental Jewish values that frame civil rights work, such as: “Whoever saves a single life, it’s as if he is saved an entire world;” “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt;” “Perfection of the world under the rule of God;” “Justice, Justice, you shall pursue.”
To ready the students to grapple with and understand these big ideas, we first take a few weeks to teach them the drama skills of pantomime, improvisation and role-play. The more the students practice role-play, the better they can use this vehicle of expression to “get inside” the motivation that propelled Heschel, King and civil rights activists to commit to their convictions. The students enact the roles of bystanders watching the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama and afterwards we discuss how it felt to see the multitudes of people marching for change. Students who role-played as “whites” compare their experience with those who stood as “blacks.” We asked if they imagined fear, pride or confusion. Through role-play students “step into someone else’s shoes” and experience various scenarios which helps them to work out the impact of these big ideas on their own lives. For the class theatrics to progress with meaning, the students must listen to each other, hear what is said and respond.
The students later read about the Reform rabbis who decided to wear kippot while they marched for civil rights, even though many Reform clergy in the 1960s did not cover their heads. The students role-play these Reform rabbis struggling with the dilemma whether or not to identify themselves as Jews during the marches. By playing out these concrete situations the students begin to deepen their understanding, not only of the implications of personal actions (a rabbi donning a kippah for a civil rights march when his own congregation rejected kippot generally), but also they sight the Jewish value that it is to take a stand: “Do not stand idly by while your brother’s blood is at stake.” They begin to discern the impact of their own actions.
During drama-based classes, the teacher continually observes student progress to ensure the learning. Assessment is based on student engagement in the work, on students linking skills and ideas between topics, and how they perform their understanding through drama. We analyze on three levels – understanding the generative topic of social and individual responsibility; knowledge of related Judaic text, Jewish writings and American civil rights history; we assess how students meet the collaborative challenge they see in social activism and meet personally in producing a piece of theater. A final assignment can vary, but often the students research and select a political or social cause and then present their understanding of the situation to their peers, dramatically and through a Jewish lens. They begin to see what it takes to make a difference.
For example, one student fashioned a walking figure from clay and wrote:
…I painted the road in stripes of blue, yellow and green, and left my person mainly white, because I made just one person with one personality, who walked, but the road represents all of the people who walked ahead of my person, all of the people who marched behind them. It represents how even though one person can make a difference, many people together creates a masterpiece. My person has a red heart on both sides of its body, but only the one in the back is three dimensional, the heart on the front is just painted on … from the front, looking at the face of someone walking, you might see fear of anxiety on their face, but if you watch the march from the back, all you see is a lot of people with a passion.