[HANASHIR:13008] Re: [HANASHIR:13006] Re: Fw:Jewish Education, Jewish continuity...

[elerner1 <elerner1...>]

On 12/3/02, sholom (at) aishdas(dot)org wrote: 

>the question is: what are we going to do about it?

Like many difficult issues, this one has no easy answer. Everyone has his/her 
own story; everyone is different; what will work the best for the good of a 
Jewish community may one may not work for individuals or other communities.  I 
went to public and private school-secular and independent. In public school at 
the time, I sang in choirs and we did a lot of xmas stuff in december. Believe 
me I knew more xtian music than jewish music. In private school,  Jews were 
quite a minority. Although an independent school, we had chapel every morning, 
it was pretty christian oriented. 

I went to reform religious school and hated it like everyone else, mostly 
because it took up one of my days to sleep. There was no afternoon religious 
school at the time, and if there was I may not have survived it. Hard to say, 
looking back.  I knew from very early one that I was Jewish at heart, and I did 
not feel I was learning all that much in religious school.  What endeared me 
the most, and I've said it before, was the opportunity and incentive to sing in 
a junior choir every week in elementary school and then as a teenager in the 
then professional Friday night choir. Also, the influences and attitudes of my 
parents toward being Jewish shaped who I was the most, especially home 
observance, rudimentary as it was.  After confirmation at the end of ninth 
grade, to everyone's surprise and mine too, the rabbi had a post 
(philosophical) confirmation class and I volunteered to attend on my own and I 
enjoyed it (!) and then started learning more interesting ideas than I had ev!
er in religious school.

To Make an already  too  long a story a little longer, from my own personna and 
my own environment, my point is that I felt that growing up in the secular 
world endeared me more and more to my Judaism. At the same time it is very 
important to have some rudimentary idea of the basic tenets of Judaism   and 
where Judaism has come from historically.  Today I have singing jobs in a 
temple as well as a church, and the case of who I am still holds true and 
enables me at the same time to continually strengthen my own faith as well as 
get a long with others in society. I don't know that I would have faired well 
in a Jewish day school, at least not then. I steered away from Jewish groups 
and my best friends at the time were not Jewish. I can't put my finger on it, 
but my own children feel the same way. They are ambiguous towards religion at 
this time, but I can only hope as they mature that most of them if not all will 
hold on and pass on their Jewish roots. Some of our most famous m!
ovie starts, grown up in secular Hollywood, have returned to their roots as 
well. enough for now.
Ellen
rochester, Ny

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