Soccer Dad

Better children through torah

About 30 years ago journalist Ellen Willis wrote a remarkable essay for Rolling Stone magazine, "Next Year in Jerusalem." (Unfortunately I haven't found it or any references to it online.) The story was about Willis's brother who was searching for some meaning in life when he went to Israel. He was approached by a representative of the Yeshiva, Aish Hatorah and was convinced to study in the Yeshiva. In short order he became an Orthodox Jew.

Ellen Willis was troubled by her brother's transformation and went to investigate. In the article she wrote about grappling with the challenges that Orthodox Judaism presented her. In her narrative she becomes sympathetic toward Orthodox Judaism and considers adopting the lifestyle herself. But she can't quite bring herself to change her own lifestyle and belief system, which would be necessary to become Orthodox.

What brought Ellen Willis's article to mind is Emily Bazelon's So the Torah Is a Parenting Guide?

The subject of the article is Wendy Mogel's "“The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children." It tells the story of Dr. Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist.

How did Dr. Mogel get interested in the wisdom of Judaism?

Then one night in 1990 on a lark, Mogel accepted a friend’s invitation to go to a service for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. She thought of the excursion as cultural anthropology: she’d had a good time with her daughter Susanna at an international mask and dance festival; “now we could see how these people, the Jews of West Los Angeles, celebrated their ancient holy day,” she writes in “Skinned Knee.” But Mogel listened to the prayers and found herself crying.

She went back a second time. Then she decided to go alone to a Friday-night service at a Reform synagogue near her house. By listening to a tape, she started learning the Hebrew prayers and their melodies. She and her husband began celebrating the Jewish Sabbath — first by stumbling through the candle-lighting and going out for Thai food (shrimp included) and gradually adding the full liturgy and a traditional meal. “It was always the same, which was what I loved about it,” Susanna, now 19, remembers. Mogel baked challah. Tolkin made poached salmon. Every family member and guest said their “gratefuls,” naming the events of the week they felt thankful for.

The family never took the full leap into Orthodox Judaism, with its restrictions on food and travel on Shabbat and relatively fixed gender roles. But they sent their daughters to schools at Reform synagogues for a good part of elementary school and tried out different L.A. synagogues — from Reform to modern Orthodox to the exploratory Mountaintop Minyan. The rituals were soothing, but Mogel was most moved by Jewish learning. As she began to read the Torah and the Talmud, the massive compendium of rabbinic teachings on Jewish law and commentary on the Bible, she felt she was on the trail of the sort of wisdom she’d been missing.

In 1992, Mogel decided to take a break from her practice for a year and study the old Jewish texts full time. Her office partner was taken aback. So were her parents. But she proceeded even though Jewish study didn’t come easily to her — she took basic Judaism and introductory Hebrew three times. Her studies helped to repair her frayed ends.

Unlike Ellen Willis, Dr. Mogel didn't seem to consider adopting a more religious lifestyle, however she did accept and embrace the wisdom that she learned. So it makes sense that the point of her book is not to encourage a religiuos lifestyle.

Most Orthodox Jewish child-rearing books that Mogel read prescribed devout Judaism as the single path to raising moral children. Mogel wanted to use Jewish teachings to “show you how to raise good people, not just good little Jews,” as Genevieve Fortuna put it to her students. To the psychologist, the yetser hara is a way to think about the root of longing and a reminder that passionate desire isn’t all bad. “Without it, there would be no marriage, no children conceived, no homes built, no businesses,” Mogel writes. So children shouldn’t be blamed for their desires. But that doesn’t mean they should be placated either, a phenomenon Mogel heard about frequently from parents. The wildness of the yetser hara can’t be stamped out, and shouldn’t be. But it doesn’t get to run the show.

So it shouldn't be surprising the popularity of Mogel's book isn't necessarily in the Jewish community.

Strikingly, Mogel’s book is being used as a text for classes and discussion groups that take place not in Jewish settings but in churches or schools like Carolina Day. Mogel, who gives about a speech a month, has been a keynote speaker at the annual meetings of the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents 1,300 private schools, and the American Camp Association, an umbrella group for 2,600 summer camps and youth groups. This fall, the National Association of Episcopal Schools will give her top billing. Mogel’s diagnosis of the ills of middle- and upper-class modern American child-rearing — that children too often don’t learn to take care of themselves — resonates with the educators who deal with these families every day. In thinking about this issue, Mogel finds her psychological training useful but insufficient and turns her audience’s attention to the laws and teachings of old Jewish texts.

Though I'm a little disappointed that Mogel didn't internalize the teachings of Judaism more, as someone who believes in the Divinity of the Torah and the wisdom of the Rabbis, I find it gratifying that others appreciate my values too.

Technorati tags: Judaism, Torah, Psychology.