With Pesach coming, writing an article about chinuch (Jewish education) seems appropriate. The whole Yom Tov revolves around passing our heritage along to our children. We have two full nights of Seder and weeks of preparation devoted to this sacred task. How do we teach about Yetzias Mitzrayim (the exodus from Egypt) so that it is joyful and not tedious for our children and students?
Before giving any advice, I need to preface it with a disclaimer that should probably accompany every article I write: Anything I recommend works for some; it does not work for others. The Haggadah talks about four sons – all raised by the same parents – who turn out completely different. Our parenting comprises our hishtadlus (effort), but the results are not up to us. With my first child, I thought I had it all figured out. I read the books, had parenting rules to live by, and thought I had this parenting thing down pat. I did, until number two, three, etc. came along and showed me that it had nothing to do with me. My kids have their own personalities and will grow up into whomever Hashem wants them to be. I can’t take the credit – or the blame – for the results. But I am still expected to try my best.
With that said, I’d like to share some ideas to help us think about how to teach Yetzias Mitzrayim, whether at the Seder or in the classroom.
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A number of years ago, a friend of my in-laws retired from his executive position and became a docent, a volunteer tour guide, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Knowing our religious sensitivities, he offered to give us a personal tour of the museum that avoided any exhibits that we found theologically or religiously objectionable. He knew the stairways, employee-only hallways, and rooms, so he could show us the art we wanted to see while avoiding the art we didn’t. That tour was some of the best teaching I have ever witnessed.
We wanted to see the suits of armor (with four boys, who wouldn’t?) and mummies. Our friend specialized in modern art and was going to also show us the pieces he loved.
The first thing I noticed about the tour is that we were moving, really moving, and fast. As an adult, when you go to a museum, you walk slowly around the room, pausing at each piece, studying it, and discussing it. That was not how we toured. The docent showed us a painting and then rushed us across the whole museum to look at a sculpture. After a short conversation, he turned us around, and we practically ran to the other side of the museum to see a wall hanging in the room next door to the first piece we saw. If we adults wanted to linger to look more, we couldn’t; he ushered us out and kept us walking/running to keep up. The children had to keep pace. The results were amazing. When we stopped, the children were fully present, discussing and engaging with the art. They enjoyed every piece of art we saw. They didn’t get bored or antsy.
At the Seder, we may not be moving physically, but we are moving through the Haggadah. Most adults want to stop and share divrei Torah in an orderly and slow fashion. Children can’t keep their attention focused in that way. They need variety and movement. They need to feel like they need to catch their breath. Have them look back to Kadesh when you are in Maggid, and keep the pace uneven and unpredictable. The phrase to remember is: You need to go fast to go slow.
Another lesson that I learned is that you need to teach kids like the children they are. My children still remember one part of the tour. They were told to sit on a bench opposite a huge Jackson Pollock painting that covered the wall. This was a classic Jackson Pollock with paint splattered everywhere. The instructions were to find a red dot somewhere on the huge canvas. My children examined the painting from top to bottom until they finally found the red dot, just like a Where’s Waldo? book. There was no discussion of abstract expressionism, nor did they analyze the painting. They found a red dot. Afterward, they talked a bit about what the painting said and what they thought of the red dot. Years later, one of my children, who was very young during our tour, pointed to a painting and told us that it was a Jackson Pollock. They remember that painting, the artist, and his style because they were doing something that was age-appropriate and that they were good at.
At the Seder, we are talking about very lofty concepts. Our entire religion is predicated on remembering our coming out of Mitzrayim. Yet if we only talk about ideals and complex ideas, we will be missing out on the goal of teaching the children in front of us. Children can’t appreciate the abstract. We need to teach them on their concrete level so they get involved and remember it. If it goes over their heads, we are talking to ourselves. In the Seder, we need to the find red dots for children to look for so that they become familiar with the Haggadah and get involved with it. Over time, they will come to a deeper understanding. But first, they need to just experience it with the joy of discovery that means something to them.
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While keeping learning concrete is important, we still need to add meaning and depth to the learning for ourselves. It is tempting to turn the Seder into a big party: throwing makkos props, dressing up, or singing silly songs. That is entertaining, but even if learning is fun, not all fun is learning. At the museum, we saw that just because we enjoyed something, it didn’t make it interesting or memorable.
We really wanted to show our children the displays of horses and knights all dressed in chain mail with long, decorated swords. We thought the boys, who were after all little boys, would love the weapons and the costumes. Our tour guide warned us that medieval armor was outside his area of expertise but agreed to make a stop there. We stopped and looked around at the armor and oohed and aahed over some of the delicate designs. Years later, my children can describe Jackson Pollock, but don’t really remember the armor. The docent didn’t have enough background knowledge to make the learning meaningful and memorable. We saw it, but we didn’t learn as much because our guide was not an expert, as he was in other areas of the museum.
Although we need to keep the Seder moving and age-appropriate, we need to also conduct it with a foundation of knowledge and insight. What we teach needs to come from a place of scholarship and thought. This means that, even if we are “only” singing a Makkos song with our children, we need to learn about the Makkos with meforshim beforehand, because the way we sing that song will be different from singing it without having learned at all.
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I learned a final lesson at the museum, which is that children view things through the lens of the society and time when they are growing up. We need to understand where they are coming from and teach them so they can see things from a more mature perspective.
Years ago, my father-in-law was given a gift of a print of an impressionist painting by Claude Monet of sunflowers. It was a small 16x20 print that was very pretty and matched our dining room, and so my father in law gave it to us. Since it hung next to our dining room table, my children were very familiar with it. When we got to the Met, we discovered that the original Monet was there and was double the size of our print. I wanted my children to see a true impressionist painting and the beauty that comes from the broad strokes and bold colors. To best appreciate it, we stood across the room, and one of my children commented. “I like ours better. That one is so big it is out of focus.”
I had to laugh, as my 21st-century child was so used to digital photos, pixelated images, and smaller being clearer, that he saw the same thing in this piece of art. To teach him what was beautiful about the art, I needed to be aware of why he could say our photocopy was nicer than the original. I needed to help him appreciate the brush strokes, the color choice, and the complexity, when all he saw was a bad digital photo.
At the Seder, we need to remember that, no matter how sheltered we think our children are, they have a lens that is not the same as the one we had growing up. They may look at something and not see its beauty because they can’t understand it or because it is so different from what is normal nowadays. We need to understand where they are coming from so we can teach them clearly the depth of the truth rather than the neatness of a reproduction.
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Pesach is fast approaching. As we teach our children, we need to keep in mind that they need a faster pace with more variety than we do, that they need to get involved with concrete tasks that let them explore, that we need to prepare ourselves with the depth of what we are teaching, and that we need to explain our perspective to children who are growing up in the 21st century. When we do this, we will have done our best to pass our mesorah to our children, who are the next link and our future.
A Chag kasher vesame’ach.
