[HANASHIR:5582] Re: wrestling

[Rglauber <Rglauber...>]

Rich Glauber here, having disappeared from the list for a number of months.  
In fact, I've started a bunch of emails to the list, but haven't yet managed 
to make it to the SEND key.  Because what I've been feeling will probably 
come across negatively, I always second guess myself and figure that everyone 
else is right, and I must be wrong..... or negative..... or whatever.    
However, I notice that when I don't actually contribute to the mix, I find 
myself getting further and further away.....  hmmmm

So in the interest of not disappearing completely, I'd like to offer the 
following.....  and please forgive the generalities herein.....

The tone of this list is very positive, usually quite supportive, and to my 
thinking, somewhat smug and self satisfied.   It's as if we have agreed that 
we are wonderful, our work is without peer.....  that music class is great, 
that all the songs work, aren't we terrific?  To my way of thinking, it's 
great to be positive, but there is a place for questioning, for re-inventing, 
for re-imagining, and I just don't get that vibe from this list.   

Am I alone in hoping for more from  Hanashir?    A couple of years ago we had 
a very passionate discussion about how to reach the fifth and sixth graders 
who were turning off to music class.   For me, that was the highlight of the 
cyber experience, because it called into question our core assumptions about 
what we were trying to accomplish.   Nowadays, it seems like we don't 
question anymore, only tinker around.

I question all the time, and the one that keeps coming up for me is how to 
enliven the experience of being Jewish.   Who was it who said, "If I can't 
dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"?   That's how I'm feeling about 
Judaism in North America.   We are so focused on passing down a heritage, a 
language, a set of beliefs, a vocabulary, that we inundate the students with 
years and years and years of intellectual content.   We crush them with 
words..... we bore the hell out of them out of some supposed ideal of 
teaching the traditions which our grandparents knew.  

I see it as based on fear, fear of losing numbers, fear of intermarriage, 
fear of not being "religious" enough.  Yet ironically, the way in which we 
educate our young does exactly what we were afraid of.   They turn off, and 
why shouldn't they?  

Now granted, there are many young people who come up through the ranks and 
love being Jewish.   God bless them.   But for the vast majority, and you can 
correct me if I'm wrong, they can't wait til their bar/bat mitzvah and then 
they're out of there.  Is that a coincidence, or are we missing something 
fundamental?  (not to mention the millions and millions of us who are adults 
and want nothing to do with organized Judaism)

If you were to ask me what is the fundamental problem with Judaism today, I 
would say it is the absence of physicality.   It is the fact that we are 
trying to teach ruach without taking any deep breaths.   OK, everybody stand 
up and make a circle.....  



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