I’m going to be honest with you all. This was the first year I ever celebrated Lag BaOmer. And in complete and full disclosure, I didn’t even really know what it was for most of my life. But this year, the holiday fell right around the time of our final Better Together session, which is always (two years running) a celebratory gathering at my home. Lag BaOmer refers to the 33rd Day of the Omer which are the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. Today, the days of the Omer are a time for reflection, but the 33rd day is a day of celebration, rejoicing, and…barbecues. So, if we are really laying it all on the line, it had me at barbecue.
As one Talmudic story goes, God lifted a plague on the 33rd day of the Omer that was killing thousands of Rabbi Akivah’s students who had become competitive and cruel to one another. In another story we celebrate the life of Akivah’s student, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, author of the Zohar, a key mystical text, but whom God forced back into the cave he had studied in for 12 years until he learned that holiness is not just between man and God but between man and friend.
Each story points to the idea that Judaism is not just a religion about serving God but about the quality of our relationships. Better Together, which brings our high schoolers and our senior citizens together for conversation and community every month, is about listening, sharing, and most of all, celebrating. Our year together was magical-both seniors and teens gaining perspective from each other’s stories and delighting in each other’s company. (Not to mention the epic cornhole tournament…but that’s for another article.) For many of our teens, interactions with seniors are limited to their grandparents. For our seniors to be with kids who are actively choosing to spend Sunday afternoon with them gives them hope for the future of the Jewish people and our world. It is an honor and a joy to be a part of this amazing, thoughtful, and life-affirming group.
I just listened to Dr. Rebecca Winthrop, the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, who spoke with Ezra Klein from the New York Times on his podcast, “We Have to Really Rethink the Purpose of Education,” Winthrop’s recent research explores why we teach, what we teach and how we teach particularly in a world where generative technology is moving at a breakneck speed forcing us to re-evaluate what schools are for and what we want our kids to get out of them. …It was a dizzying podcast that asked very hard questions about how we adapt to a changing world. When asked about how parents might want to think about their kids’ schooling, she said, Make sure that kids are learning to interact with other human beings – any school that has them working with peers, but even connecting with community members. Our social networks are getting smaller. There’s going to be a premium on human-to-human interaction….
Relationships bloom and thrive in our Synagogue School through intentional programming and curricular development with student-to-student connection as the goal, not a lucky byproduct. Girls Group, Bros Chodesh, One2One, Better Together-we encourage all our teens to join us for community building that thrives on being seen, heard, and welcomed. As I’ve learned through Lag BaOmer, learning isn’t a battlefield. And you can’t separate yourself from humanity in an effort to get closer to God. Godliness is only achieved by treating others with kindness, love, and respect. It continues to be a privilege to walk alongside a community where this is what matters most.
Rebecca Hirschwerk
Director of Congregational Education
