The most recent Lookjed featured a post by Dov Lipman asking how Orthodox schools can skip teaching the mitzvah of aliya, which is a clear Torah commandment.
I would like to raise a different question: How do Orthodox schools skip teaching about God, Who is the author of the Torah?
Beth Hait recently wrote about this phenomenon, and it cannot be unknown to day school teachers who are often so busy teaching Talmud, Tanakh, Halakha, etc., that they have no time to teach about basic Jewish belief. She writes:
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Throughout my two-decade career working with college students and young professionals, I have shared many conversations with day school graduates about their school experiences. Far too often, conversations with them about God have been their first positive experience at being able to raise questions about God and to voice their thoughts, and at times, doubts, about God’s existence. Not addressing an individual’s queries about God in the classroom is a serious flaw. For one, once the question about God is raised, the entire class has heard it and even those students that weren’t thinking about it now have it on their minds. Secondly, for the student who raised the question and didn’t get an answer, the dilemma did not disappear. It is entirely possible that for that individual, and now for the entire class, they are thinking that the teacher either doesn’t know the answer or that Judaism has no answers.
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See the full article here: [
www.thejewishweek.com]
Do you talk abut God in your classroom?
If not, why not?
Alyssa
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2016 10:37AM by mlb.
