“Your class is the only class my child says doesn’t suck.”
Now I’ve been teaching religious school for about 12 years, everything from Holocaust to history to civics.
But this was the first time a parent ever said anything like this to me.
You know what? Instead of dismissing that comment, though I wish he would have used different words, I want to discuss it.
First, Baltimore’s Center for Jewish Education, is taking a really hard look at itself, and is looking to move forward in an admirable, positive way to make religious school better for everyone.
The idea is to create young Jews who are interested and excited.
But we all are way too familiar with the drill now. After a long day of school, extra-curricular activities such as sports and yearbook, the last thing a young teen wants to do is sit and learn about Jewish history.
And come on guys, we weren’t all hatched as middle aged people. I remember hating my 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday morning experiences at Hebrew school. I dreaded those Sundays, and came up with some of my most creative ways of sudden “illness” that I can remember. Don’t get self-righteous, you did the same thing.
So, not to short circuit in any way what is going on at CJE, because I think it is all great and I admire CJE’s leadership for having the guts to seek re-invention.
But as a part-time teacher of teens, here are several ideas I’d like to see happen. Let’s make it experiential. Let’s let the teens experience Judaism. Let’s let the teens see what we’re talking about. They should know “where” they come from. They should see Judaism at work, and why it is what it is. So, in no particular order:
• Challah. Let’s take the kids to a person’s kitchen and watch as they make braid the dough and make challah for Shabbat. The kids should also make their own challahs.
• Take a bus tour of neighborhoods where Jews just weren’t allowed to live in or even visit at one time in this city’s history. Also, a bus tour of what was once Jewish Baltimore, so that they see where their parents and grandparents once lived. Give them a sense of who they are.
• Let’s head over to Levindale. Let the students meet and talk to old people, who can describe to them how they were once captain of the soccer team too, they once had a crush on boy or a girl, and they loved music and loved to dance as much as any contemporary teen.
• Meet a Jewish soldier who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
• Spend a Sabbath in the home of a Shomer-Shabbat family from candle lighting to Havdalah.
• Go to a mikvah, and see what it looks like with an explanation of what happens in a mikvah and why.
• Meet a person who actually writes Torahs in their work space. Watch as the sopher uses a quill pen and writes the sacred Hebrew letters.
• Have the kids help out for a night with Ahavas Yisroel, actually packing food and then delivering to those Jews in need.
• Take the kids on a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Don’t ever take it for granted that they’ve been there.
• Take the kids to a beis medresh or a study hall in a yeshiva so they can see people talking over or debating issues of Torah together.
• Have someone come in with a Talmud and explain to the kids what the Talmud is, what it means and how it came to be.
• Give the students a bus tour of organized Jewish Baltimore. Let them see where the Associated building is located, and teach them what happens there. Let them see the Jewish community campus on Park Heights near Northern Parkway.
• Take them to Annapolis to meet Jewish elected officials and lobbyists.
• Take them to meet families who have been helped by Jewish charitable dollars.

These are just suggestions. But I think to borrow the phrase from the adult I heard it from, class would “suck” a lot less, if we were able to show our Jewish teens where they fit in the holistic Jewish fabric of community. I think they’d learn more about Judaism, about themselves and why all of this is so special.