The Process of Becoming
What’s it like to teach a bunch of pre-teens Torah in a supplementary (Hebrew) school?
Absolutely astonishing. Actually, it’s just about the most fun a Jewish educator can have. Really. (no snide remarks here, I’m serious)
I get to change up my own (boring) Hebrew school experience and reinvent it for them. Each and every week. My favorite part is when they’re able to think about things in new ways, and my goal is to create those memorable ‘aha’ moments.
Can I let you in on this? Indulge me here, while I share with you, a glimpse into my time with them.
Here’s what happened yesterday.
I developed a unit on God1 which I’ve been working on with them for the past few weeks. We began learning the different names for God and last week, we learned about Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush:
Moses said to God: Here, I will come to the Children of Israel
and I will say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you,
but they will say to me: What is his name?— what shall I say to them? Exodus 3:13
I needed to build up the suspense here: How do you think God responded? How would you have responded? Do you think God gave Moses a name? What name would have been used? What can we learn from that?
Their answers were precious. Sometimes I wish I had it all on video.
We continued reading the text:
God said to Moses: “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh/אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה/ I will be however I will be.”
Continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Children of Israel, ‘Ehyeh /אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה/ I will be” has sent me Exodus 3:14
We then talked about what kind of a name is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. They were stumped (even with the English translation). So we broke the sentence fragment into parts of speech and they finally came to the conclusion that a ‘Name’ would typically be a pronoun, or a proper pronoun, but not a verb.
So, I asked them: “What are we supposed to learn from this? What does it mean that God is a verb? An action?”
They gave some insightful answers but we weren’t there yet. This readied everyone for this week’s lesson, where I needed to go to the next level of recognition.
The task was to break into small groups and describe step-by-step instructions for teaching someone how to skip. But, they couldn’t use shortcut words like hop or jump, instead, they had to describe each and every step. One person would read the instruction while another person would act out each move in front of the class—to see how close to a skip it would be. First, they would rehearse.
They were busy trying this out, in different parts of the room, recording and acting out each move with giggling and laughter amidst kicks, jumps, sprints, and skips. In the end, only one group came a tiny bit close to being able to do it.
They had a good time realizing that you can’t really describe some things, you just have to do it, to experience it, in order to understand.
Same with God. You need to have the experience of God in order to ‘know’ God.
On a deeper level we can think of the words of R’Yeruchem Levovitz (1873-1936): “Realize that when you are engaged in a mitzvah, it is not only an action you are doing. Rather, you are transforming yourself into a more elevated person. You are not just doing, but becoming.”
This is what engaging in Mussar practice is like2.
When we understand that we are in a process of change ourselves, and pursue that as a goal…to elevate and transform ourselves from one day to the next, we are becoming our best selves, made in the shadow of God (B’tzelem Elohim).
Have a great week of becoming.
In order to avoid gender pronouns…not due to reasons of equality, but because I don’t want thinking in this area to be limited in any way, I avoid the use of any gender when referring to God.
Mussar is a contemporary practice of an ancient orientation to character development. I teach this to adults in an online course called “Making Torah Personal”. I will be starting another group on Wednesday mornings if you’re interested. Just email me at innerjudaism@gmail.com or connect via my website at innerjudaism.com