[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Corin Podcast. While we are currently on hiatus, I'm delighted to bring you this one off episode ahead of Pesach. Back in November, I had the privilege of moderating a fascinating conversation in Atlanta between two outstanding teachers and leaders, Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Rebecca Winter. This event was part of a special weekend of celebrations marking the release of the it held edition of the Parasha set by Emily Amrussi, telling the story of the Parasha for kids that was recently published last year. Dedicated by Elisa and Gavin Elman in memory of Elisa's parents, Simone and Julius Eitel. At the beginning of the conversation, you'll hear our two guests introduce themselves and I just want to say a word about them before we dive in. Now Dr. Duke's name and his research into building resilience through sharing family stories appears time and time again in books, articles and further studies that explore the importance of knowing and passing down our histories. His work really is a touchstone in so many discussions about why our stories matter, and it was real privilege to have him as part of this conversation. And Dr. Rebecca Winter is an incredible Jewish educator and leader. It was truly a pleasure to spend time with her during my visit to Atlanta and to learn from her insights and experience. So what you're about to hear is a recording from that event. And while the conversation itself focuses on the weekly Parasha and doesn't directly touch on Pesach or the Sayyidinate, I felt it was especially timely to share it now as we prepare for Pesach, a time when we place such emphasis on storytelling, passing our history to the next generation, this discussion about the power of knowing our stories and helping our children understand where they come from feels all the more relevant. And as we make our way through Sefer Vayikra, a book that can feel particularly challenging when it comes to engaging our children with its focus on the Korbanot, the sacrifices, and the laws of purity. So Emily Amrousi's set really stands out as an amazing gift. Each week she offers a clear and accessible way into the Parasha while staying true to the text, but making its themes approachable and meaningful for young readers. So let's jump into the conversation and I hope you'll find a meaningful listen as we head towards Pasak.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: Hey, good morning everyone. Thank you all for coming. Before we start, I'm going to ask our amazing panelists, Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Rebecca Winter, just to introduce themselves and tell them tell you a little bit about themselves and then we'll get into our conversation for today. So, Dr. Duke, if you want to start.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: So thank you for inviting me to be part of this. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk to people who are interested in transmitting stories, because that's the thing that I've been studying for the past goodness now, 30 years, looking at the importance of knowledge of where we came from, how we came to be, where we are, and why. That knowledge in kids as well as in families strengthens children and builds resilience in children and gives us the ability to overcome, to rise above the kinds of things that inevitably happen in our lives.
The. Just in terms of my background, I. I taught at Emory since 1970.
It's a long time. I retired two years ago also after a long time. You know, I was. And, and I've continued to work with Jewish Grandparents Network on their programs in storytelling. And more recently, I've been working with Anu, with the Museum of the Jewish People in Israel on the narrative of the Jewish people and how the narrative of the Jewish people can help us through things like the war and the other things that will inevitably happen to the Jewish people and through learning what has happened and focusing on the narrative going back as far as the original narrative, which is what we talk about today when we look at the Torah and why it's so important for us all and our children especially, to know what the story is, the good and the bad.
And I'll talk a little bit more about the bad, because it seems to be that knowledge of the bad is as important or even more important in some instance than knowing all the good stuff that happened.
So I was thrilled to see this book, to look at it, to, to see how it tells a story at a relatable level.
And I was excited. What can I tell you? You know, I. I knew the other one was there. It's in Hebrew. I don't speak Hebrew.
I can't read Hebrew. But I can see that when it's transformed into accessible language for me as well as for children who don't speak Hebrew, families who don't, it's. It's a treasure. And I hope we'll talk more about that.
[00:05:34] Speaker D: Thank you. This is on. Hi, my name is Rebecca Winter, and it has been an honor to be. To play a very small, tiny part in this project. And just seeing. Working a little bit with Aryeh Coram, but really seeing Elisa and Gavin's passion for the project has been really inspiring. And they really are so passionate about bringing the really our daily, our weekly partial learning to.
In a very accessible way to our families here in Atlanta. I am a Judaic studies principal at Atlanta Jewish Academy at aja. I'm also a clinical psychologist outside of that, too. And I think through both of those professions and both of the things I do, I've really seen the power of stories and the impact that they have on children. And I know in my role at aja, we really work very hard at trying to, as much as possible, make the Torah exciting and accessible to children. And it's so exciting to have a new tool that we can use to. To do that. So.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Okay, thank you both. So let's jump in. Before we do a little bit of a. An icebreaker, I'm going to ask both of you to tell us a little about maybe one favorite parasha or favorite narrative from the Torah that, let's say resonates with you or you find meaning in kind of your family relationships. Why don't we start with Dr. Winter and then Dr. Jigsaw?
[00:07:02] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: We're gonna mix it up. It's gonna be unpredictable. It's gonna be all right.
[00:07:05] Speaker D: Keep us on our toes. Okay. So, yeah, I thought about this a little, because you kind of gave us a heads up about this question. What's our. What's my favorite parsha in the Torah? And I was thinking, you know, like, I could be really philosophical about this, but really, when it comes down to it, I love Parashat Shmut Exodus, the first Parasha of Sefer Shemot. Yeah. Oh, I got a yay. From Moradina. That's awesome. When I really thought about why that is, the first thing I will say is that I love the teacher I had who taught me Parashat Shemad. Her name was Morris Aperstein from Toronto, and that is a really big deal. The person who is able to convey Torah in a meaningful way to you. I think all these years later, it's still real. I remember the feeling of learning Parshat Shemot in that classroom, and that's a feeling that stays with you for decades. And. And that's. That's just so meaningful. But over the years, I found that Parashat Shemot, really, I found the deeper meaning behind Parashat Shemot. And I love the feeling of we're like, in the Torah, we've done Sefer Bereshit. We know what we're doing. We know the deal. Like, we know where we are. But now in Sefer Shemot, it's not just about the individual story, but we really understand where the Torah is. Going with this, like why we had to learn about all the avot. And now that there was a reason why we learned about these people so that we can be. There's a national message and that the individuals we meet in Parashat Shemot are doing what they do for the purpose of the nation. And I find that so inspiring and so exciting. It also has this like element of despair and hope and there's everything in it. So, you know, if you haven't looked at it in a while, do. Because it's great. It's the best.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Wonderful. The parsha that, that is, I think personal to, to our family is Viera might not be for the reason you think we had years ago at Sharth Israel, which is the shul I belong to a need to get a new Torah. And the way they chose to try and fund this Torah was to give congregants the opportunity. You know, you always have opportunities at shuls to, to reserve a, a, a line or a section in the new Torah and to say, this is, this is what I'm going to sponsor.
And in Viera there's a moment where, you know, God says to Abraham, take Hagar has to leave.
And Abraham says, gee, doesn't seem right.
And in that paragraph, God says, you know, your wife Sarah, listen to what she says.
And my wife's name is Sarah, so that that line belongs to my family.
And it was good advice. It turns out we're married for 60 years now.
So that's. It's. On a personal, personal note, Bayer is important in terms, in terms of the, the Torah's story. When I have an opportunity to, to lead Torah study at Sharith Israel, which is when all the other possibilities are busy, they'll ask me if I'll come. And I do tend to do a literary analysis because I'm interested in story and narrative. And when, when I do that, it's obvious that, that one way to look at this is. It is a narrative. It is a narrative our people. It is a family story.
And it's a classic family story in that has one telling. And then at the end there's a whole book that tells it again that somebody else. They'll say, well, let me tell you the story of what happened. And it's a story and it's filled with some subtle changes. Other things are as we understood them to happen. But that seems to be the nature of family stories. And so the Torah as narrative, as story, as family story is really important to me. It's important to our family and when this is years ago when the children would go to the Hebrew Academy, when it was on Drood Hills Road. Some of you remember how many car poles did I drive to Drood Hills Road? I only got a ticket one time for making the illegal left turn. Those, those of you know that you always look and say, should I do it? Should I not? You know, so. But every, every week there was a discussion at Shabbat, you know, what was what, what's the Torah portion for this week? What did she talk about? And to try and find some way to connect that to what happens. How did the weak connect to what happened in. In the Torah portion? And I think that that's something that we continue to do with the grandchildren, which I happily can tell you. I have nine.
And they, they also listen to what Sarah says.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: So, I mean, just to share for myself, I think I would say so. My Bamitza parasha is Parashat Vayedhanan, which is in the book of Devarim in Deuteronomy. And I've tried every year to Lena. I've managed to every year. I think Maybe I've missed two since the year 2000. So I'm not doing too badly. And every year after I Lena people like, wow, there is a lot going on in that Parasha. There's like ten Commandments, there's Shema, like, that is super busy. So I definitely feel like a connection myself to my bar Mitzvah Parasha. And at home, something like we always try and do, like when the Parasha of my kids come around, we'll be like, well, you know what? This week, this Shabbat in 7 years time is going to be and just to build up so they know what their Bamitza Parasha is. And something that we're doing in our Shulem Odin now is actually getting everyone, men and women, boys and girls, to connect to their bar Mitzvah Parasha to take time of the year to learn it, especially women. Often they didn't have a Bat Mitzvah or they had a bat Mitzvah. It wasn't a particular time. It was on a Sunday. Whatever it was, it wasn't. They don't necessarily feel connected to what the. They didn't even realize what the Parasha of the week was when they look back. So I think that kind of everyone having a parasha that's connected to their. When they were born to their bar and Bat Mitzvah is a really nice way for everyone to kind of find their unique part or connection to something in the Torah. So definitely something I'd recommend everyone to think about diving into things a little bit.
Dr. Gigi mentioned this a little bit, but it'd be interesting to hear from both of you. How. How can discussions, family discussions of the weekly parasha, how can that experience foster deeper family connections? Start with. Dr. Winter keeps it crazy each time. I'm going to ask you questions occasionally.
[00:14:09] Speaker D: Okay, great question. I think that in a. In a. In many ways. But first, what I've noticed most is that when we come together at the end of a long week, we're all really tired. We come around the table. Also, my kids like to fight.
Same thing. You know, we all have that. And instead of. What I've noticed is that we could talk about our week and think about the past week and all the kind of treasury of the week. But there's this immediate thing. Sometimes it's a story, and sometimes it really isn't a story. And we'll talk about that maybe a little bit later. But there's. There's something that the kids know, like we are going to talk about something that is not school and that is not work and that is not sports, and that's not all the things that happen in the week, but it's something different. And it's something that we share, not just in our family, but in all the families in our community. And I think that is my. I know that my kids have this in their minds, that it's not just our table that's talking about the parsha, but it's the neighbor's table, too. And maybe we don't all go to the same synagogue, and maybe we don't even always practice Judaism in the same ways. But I know my kids know, and I know they know this, that there are all across communities, all across Jewish tables in Atlanta, in the United States, across the world, we are all discussing the same thing. And we didn't all have the same week, and we don't all go to the same schools, and we don't all do the same jobs. But there's a connection that they feel. And when we don't bring up the parsha, because sometimes we are really tired, one of them will say, like, you know, we. You didn't say what parsha is this week. And I know they want it because it's not just that we have super stimulating conversations, because we don't a lot of the time, but they want it because they really feel the connection. And it's not just the family. They feel the connection throughout the world throughout the Jewish community. And I found it to be incredibly powerful. I think before I became a parent, I always had these visions as a teacher. Like, my family is going to have the most deep conversations about the. We are really going to get into it. I love Jewish education. I have so much wisdom to share, but, you know, I can't always share that wisdom and they don't always want to hear it, and that's really okay. But just talking about what is the parsha, just on that very basic surface level, I could see that they really need it. They. They love that connection. And so I think it's not just the connection to the family, but it's that they know that this is happening and that this is something that's constant and consistent and that's incredibly powerful. And it's been incredibly powerful to me.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: What she said.
Let me just add a couple. A couple of things we know. And if we go to another. Another level of above content to go to something that we call process, and that is sitting down and having dinner together, which is something we do less and less.
Research has shown us that two or three family dinners per week, just family dinners, and this is not just Jewish family dinners, family dinners has a tremendous salutary effect on children and on families. And that is that the children who come from families that have dinner or a meal together two or three times a week are more resilient. They do better in school. They're less likely to get into trouble with the law. They're less likely to get involved in drugs and alcohol. It's an unbelievable effect of simply having two or three family dinners.
As Bruce Freiler, who, who has written about our work, has said, he has family breakfast because dinner is hard, but just sitting down together and having a meal with one another is the, The. It's the, The. The background or the, the soil in which what the. The parsha or any stories that are told is placed and it grows from there. And the stories we. The research that we, we did at Emory, we call some of these stories today I. Stories.
What you do today well, today I. And then there's something that the child says in this conversation and problems sometimes come up or, or concerns sometimes come up. And then the, The. The parents, the. The adults at the dinner or have a chance to say, you know, that happened to me too.
Grandparents are really good at this, by the way. I. Some of you, I assume, are grandparents because we can make up stories left and right.
It. It's amazing how you can make a grandchild feel Better and say, I really did bad in my math test today. And grandparent might say, you know, your mother had trouble in math also.
And sometimes the mother's sitting there and said, I have trouble.
She had trouble in math. You know what she did. And a story then comes out of how you deal with these kinds of problems.
And coming from grandparents, it has some power.
See, stories are healing, they're supportive. And sometimes there's a story, many times there is in, in the parsha of the week that actually fits. You know, we know that, right? I mean if you really take your time every single week you're looking and go, how did this wasn't, this wasn't here last year.
But then again, neither was I at the age I'm at or with the children. I, so I, I, I think that that telling the stories in our case we have this wonderful set of stories that you say so beautifully are shared that you, it, it's not just, you know, Mrs. So and so at Briar Vista elementary did this and nobody else is going to talk about that. Everybody's talking about the same one and it builds this web, this network of community and shared experience.
And that's what gives us, I think, a lot of strength.
So what does it do to family dynamics? It actually, it's a moment to come together, sit together, talk about something. Sometimes problems, sometimes not share a family story.
And you, you kind of said sometimes they don't want to do it. I have no problem with that.
In other words, if the child doesn't want to talk about the Parsha, we talk about the Parsha Shabbat.
And you know, some of the people you know, have I, have I learned anything about kids in my years working with children, I said they, they don't have to be happy all the time.
Sometimes they need to listen. Sometimes they need to be a little bit unhappy and a little unpai, impatient, a little bit bored.
Fine.
But if they're hearing the story, it's, it's worth it.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: I'm interested to hear what as in we've been talking a lot about the Parasha at the table and that's obviously one approach interested to hear from both of you in terms of what strategies or methods you think are you do recommend for families to use to get engage with with bringing the Parasha into those conversations. It might be strategies at the table or maybe other other ways of doing it and wondering what you think. We'll start with Dr. June.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Okay. Other ways to well, I sometimes things will come up at other times you're right. And I remember reading books when I was a kid. Some of you were maybe in my age range. We had comic books about the. The Bible, about the. The Torah.
And there were heroes in these stories, and the stories were easy to understand and they were relatable. And I think that sometimes plain old school, where you go and learn, like at Aja or the other day schools, where this is just like it's everywhere, isn't it? During the week, it's. The week is infused with it. But I think as adults who also know the story, that we can transmit it in different times in different places, and we have to look for those opportunities. But I think the dinner time. Dinner time is a time for transmission of stories. And there are a couple of other times, by the way, vacations, birthdays, when families gather together, and sometimes sad times. Also, a lot of stories are told at Shiva.
A lot of stories are told at times that are rough.
But when there's an opportunity to tell a story, I just. I just tell people tell the stories. And if you. If the kids have heard them before, all the better.
All the better.
They roll their eyes. It means they know them.
So that says you did okay, then you can tell that story. No. Oh, you know, like you. You said you forgot the parsha. Yeah, One year I forgot a tradition that passed over. My father would drive my mother crazy with this because we didn't pour. Spill some wine on the table, on her good white tablecloth. We always spilled some wine and. And if you didn't, my father would reach, take a cup of wine and pour it on a tablecloth at the end of the Passover, at the end of the Seder. And my mother would, of course, you know, and we had a Seder one time. I.
Our kids were all at the Hebrew Academy at the time, and we didn't spill any wine, and I forgot to do that. And my son picks up the wine poured on table.
Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker D: Yeah. Beautifully said. I agree with Dr. Duke and I. I think that what I've noticed is, I, I agree the sh. The. The meal time, the table, and the research out there, that really is a strong time of transmission. But I have noticed that using in school as well, obviously learning the parsha through school, and it is infused in many schools throughout the week, too. So there's this, like, excitement and anticipation for Shabbat that there's almost preparation for what the parsha will be, which is very powerful, too, to bring that to the table. But also during. During Shabbat and during the weekend, There are other opportunities, and I've seen growth in this in communities over the years. I know that many shuls, many synagogues, not just ours in Toco Hills, but they do parent child learning every week. And we did that this week so beautifully at or Hatorah led by Elisa and Gavin. And it is very powerful when you're in synagogue to come to shul, to come to synagogue and to learn with your child and learning Parshada Shavu as a kind of a natural thing to do at those times. I've also noticed as my kids are getting a little bit older, my oldest is 12, that they are able to sit for some time during the reading of Torah in shul.
And one thing that we started to do in our family is that in advance, and this has helped me too, in advance of the. Of the Torah reading in shul. I'll prepare just a couple questions, very easy questions, and they're often questions that you have to actually look inside the chumash to find. And sometimes I'll even put the pesu there. I'm happy to share, but. But it's been very powerful because the kids feel like I have a mission in shul. Like, I gotta get through Mami's questions. I'll give them a little treat, obviously. Right. But I'm gonna get through. Pardon?
Yes. Thank you. I gotta get through. I gotta do some of this, some of these questions to. I'm. I'm connecting myself to the actual text of the parsha. So I'm finding sometimes it's just finding an interesting word or finding what was it exactly that Sarai said to Avram just to get that familiarity. And that's been. It's not so much of a family transmission, but when my boys are sitting next to my husband and they're doing this sometimes together, and even if the reader is reading the parsha and they're not listening to the reader, it's in that environment, they are looking in the text. And I found that to be maybe a non traditional way of passing on the parsha, but still quite a powerful tool. So using those opportunities throughout the weekend to connect to parsha, even if it's not necessarily at the table, which is really the most powerful place, there are other opportunities that we can kind of sneak it in, and I think it still is quite, quite meaningful, lasting and powerful.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much for those. They were really, really interesting and definitely things I think I can take away, hopefully others can take away. I want to. Both of you are bringing a huge amount of Expertise, experience into this conversation. So I want to spend a little bit of time giving a chance to reflect on that. We'll start with Dr. Winter. What role do you think in your own AJA and as an educator, what role do you think that schools, educators, teachers play in kind of fostering and encouraging these conversations at home?
[00:28:05] Speaker D: That's for sure directed at me. I got that part. So I, I've noticed, I think something interesting over the years, and I talked to Dr. Duke about this a little, is that I've noticed and this is not a values judgment, like for better or for worse, but that families have over time become more reliant on schools to bring the parsha home so that it can then be transmitted, often at the table on Friday night or, or on Shabbat day. And I've noticed that over the years there is more of a what did you learn in school about the parsha and did the school do it right? Like, are these good questions that the teacher sent home? And what does the teacher mean by this? There's a lot more of that coming out. Whereas, you know, I, I'm not, I don't have the experience of Dr. Duke, but I do remember growing up, we didn't have quite as much as that. It was a given. Maybe you learned the parsha if you went to a Jewish day school, but there wasn't that, like, reliance on the school. And I think that that's a mission that schools and, and we, I know as a school, personally, as a school that we've really taken up and it's part of a lot of our conversations actually in staff conversations, how are we going to teach the parsha even at the high school level? How are we going to teach the parsha in a way that our students are going to be able to talk about this to their families? And I think that's a little bit of a newer issue, especially at a high school level, that we're really bringing this up in a really thoughtful way like that. That is something that I see our teachers and as a teacher myself, that we grapple with. It's not just about telling the parsha so that our students know the parsha, but what is it that they're going to actually take away and are they going to talk about this at home? And I don't have the right answer, but I can say that it's much more part of the conversation than I've noticed over the years than it's ever been before. That's like a non answer.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: I think something just, I mentioned over Shabbat to think about with the Parashai is that Parashai is really like a week. It's, it's one of the original weekly or regular learning programs that we have in Judaism. The Talmud Daf Yomi is one example. But that's relatively new compared to learning the Parasha week by week. But many of our kids, if they're in day schools, they're not learning the Torah week by week, they're learning book by book. They'll learn a book a year. This year they'll learn Barisha, next year they'll learn Shamma. So really they're learning Parasha for us, so they have something to talk to us about. Because for the adults, we're learning the Torah week by week, and Simcha Torah is the combination of that. So I think definitely it's interesting what you say, but it should remind us as parents that we kind of also have a responsibility if we're expecting them to bring home stuff so they can talk to the Parasha for us. We should also be prepared and ready for what we want to talk to them about the Parasha about as well, because it's really, it's our learning program as much as theirs, I think. And Dr. Duke, what, what impact would you say has engaging with the Torah, with religious texts? What kind of impact does that have on these familial relationships and child development as they grow older?
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Again, let me, let me start at the level of story and, and under the umbrella of stories is the story that the kids learn year after year, week after week. In, in the Torah portion, I've done research on stories and the effect of knowledge of family history on child development and kids well being. And the, the word that I would use is resilience.
Resilience, the ability to deal with the adversities of life, the inevitable adversities of life. And in the research that we did right after 9 11, actually this was spurred by 911 because we had an experiment nobody would ever design or approve. And that is, let's take a terrible thing and have it happen to everybody in the United States at the same time on the same day, and let's see how the people respond to it. And so after this happened, once we all pulled ourselves together a little bit, we began realizing that this group of families that we've been working with for some other reason would be good to talk to. And we talked to them about how they dealt with what happened on 9 11.
And it's a long story, which I wouldn't tell you about. But, but we, we developed this measure which was a very simple measure called do you know?
Do you know?
And it's 20 questions. Do you know where your grandfather grew up?
Do you know how your grandparents met? Do you know how your parents met?
20 questions, none of which the children could have known the answers to unless someone told them.
In other words, it had to be transmitted through a story.
And it turned out that the most resilient kids were the ones who knew more about their family background.
And broadening that, it became very clear that the story that is told to all the Jewish kids year after year is the Passover Seder, the most widely celebrated of all holidays, if I understand correctly, by Christians and Jews alike. Jews, certainly the predominant group of Christians are also having seders that tell story. And the story is one of resilience.
The story is one of overcoming, of rising above, of surviving.
And when we looked at the stories that the families that we studied actually told, the stories were filled with ups as well as downs.
And there was an Israeli sociologist by the name of Zerubavel who wrote about something called the shape of family stories.
The shape. And he said there were three basic shapes for Sam family stories.
One is an ascending narrative.
When we came to this country, we had nothing and we worked hard and then we got better and better and we did okay. It's an ascending narrative. Descending narrative is once we were okay, but then some terrible things happened and we're not okay now.
And then there's a third one. The best is always last is an oscillating narrative. That is a narrative filled with ups as well as downs.
And downs are always filled with stories of how we came back from the down. Well, think about the Torah. Think about the story. It is an oscillating narrative, just as the Seder is an oscillating narrative.
Terrible things happen, misjudgments, very bad family decisions, dysfunctional families, functional families, all kinds of people and events take place in Torah as well as in every life. But what we see because a, a novel, a book, anything which is in narrative form compresses time.
Compresses time.
So if we read a novel, a problem arises in a novel and within eight or ten hours we know how it came out. And we learn just by watching how a certain decision plays out in life. You don't have to wait. That's why I like a good one hour mystery where they catch the criminal at the end.
We see the end of it. Well, family stories are like this. This is what happened. Here's how we got out of it, and this is how we came back from it. And, you know, another bad thing happened. This is why the bad things, as I said earlier, seem to be important, because it says, yes, bad things happen, but it also says, and yes, we come back from that. We rise above from that.
And the story, in compressed form of thousands and thousands of years is what we read every single year, and little bits of it we read every week.
And this builds resilience.
That's what it does. It makes the kids stronger.
And from a psychological point of view and from a child development point of view, that's one of the most powerful effects of knowing this story and knowing, you know, all these heroes I had. Sometimes they. They weren't so heroic, you know, sometimes they did some stuff that, you know, keep it in the family, but we all know about.
So that's. The effect is of a knowledge that life is oscillating and that when you're feeling really down, you'll be back up again. But don't get, you know, that's my. My grandmother used to say, don't. Don't be Mr. Big Pants because something good happened to you.
Fine. Something bad will happen eventually.
[00:37:45] Speaker C: Just when you talk about those. Something bad or those dips, I'm interested to ask. This was something we discussed before. So I'm just asking from both of you, when we have those challenging narratives, we have things in the. In the Torah all the time. Let's take an as in. There's things that we often take for granted in the biblical narrative because it's in there. We've learned all the time. But this week, we're going to teach our kids, especially our younger kids, about a father who takes his son and tries to sacrifice him. And we kind of. And from an adult perspective, we look at that and think we get it. It was a test of Avram's faith, and this was part of the journey he's on. We see that. But for our younger kids, they just think so. Then the dad held the knife up to the son, and we kind of have to explain that. I'm wondering, to hear from both of you, how do you. How do we. What approaches should we take when we get these challenging narratives? Often there's one way of just, well, let's just skip it or let's not think about it. Wondering to hear from both of you what you think about how we approach those. Starting with Dr. Winter, of course.
[00:38:44] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I've thought about this a lot over time that we have so Many the. The Torah is not a book for children. It really is very deep and it's very complicated and it's a lot of times just challenging in every way. And often in, in many ways we feel inappropriate too. And I encountered this first, I think, when I was studying actually one of the books of Naveen with one of my, with, with one of my children. Actually, it was when he was in Moradina's class and we were learning the book of. We were learning the book of Shmuel together. So not, not one of the Parsha books, but it's. I'm coming back. And it. We came across, we were about to come to a very difficult story of the story of David and Bathsheba. And I won't get into the story, but those who know, know. And I, I really didn't know what to do. Like, how was I. He was 6 at the time. How was I going to approach this story with my son without saying, you know, we're just gonna skip chapters 10 through 12 and like, what was I gonna do about this? I. I really didn't know what to do. And I talked to my husband. He's like, well, you're the psychologist, so figure it out. And what I realized is we just barreled ahead and I told him the story in the most, in the most simple terms, meaning in a way that he could actually understand what was going on. I didn't hold back from him and I really just told him the story based on what was written in the text. And what I found was two things. One is that he asked almost no questions. He, for him, this was a brand new story and he kind of needed time just to marinate on it. He wasn't upset, he wasn't angry, he wasn't confused. He just needed some time. The second thing I realized, and I think this is maybe the most important thing, is that he really wasn't that interested in that story because for a six year old, it wasn't the most interesting story. You know what was the most interesting story? The war between. Everyone's nodding, right? The war between David and his son, Av Shalom. That was the most interesting story to him. And I have found that while teaching kids Torah, the things that we're most nervous about and the things that we feel are like, this is a very touchy type of topic for kids. They just need, at, even at these young ages, they just need to first hear the story and see that you're comfortable telling the story and that it's okay to talk about. There's that open door. And then maybe when he's 14, he's going to relearn the story and he'll be like, yeah, yeah, I learned that when I was six. Now I understand it. Now I can go back to Mummy and we can have a conversation, because I know she's not afraid to talk about the story. But I really learned from that, that circumstance, that situation, that if I am show my kids that I'm not afraid to talk about these touchy topics and these difficult topics, they really are okay. And they probably are not going to see it in the way that I see it. They are not coming at it from an adult perspective. And that's okay. That's developmentally appropriate. And I really do take that perspective now when I teach them Torah that I'm just, I'm comfortable with the Torah, I love the Torah, and I want them to as well. And I'm not going to hold back. And I'll let them, over time, I hope, come back to me or come back to someone else who they're comfortable with to revisit those stories and they'll remember, once upon a time we. We talked about it and it was okay. That's what it.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Well said.
The kids don't respond to things the way we do. And when we try and guess how they're responding, very often we're wrong more often than not. But we do know that. And all, all of us who've had kids know what I'm going to describe, and that is something happens. You're out at a park or something happens. There's a loud noise or a child trips and falls. When that happens, what the, what the kid does is look at us, right? I mean, you've had that experience.
Your child falls down, they look at you and you're going. They get upset, right? Because they look to see how we respond. But if we respond with, oh, okay, let's go, you know, take back to the swing, and they don't get upset as much because they look to us for information, fancy name, consensual validation, you know, oh, mom's upset by this. This is something you get upset about, or mom's not upset about this. This is something that we're just learning about. So this idea of, you know, I'm going to tell you what it is at a level that you can understand, and we have built into Judaism certain things we don't talk about till we're 40, right?
You're 39, leave next year, you can come in and talk about this. But so we have this understanding that there are certain levels of, of interaction and I think you skipping it is noticeable.
They, they will notice skipping it and, and they, they will understand if you simply say this happens. We had one family and this, this is, this shocked shocks us. We asked families to record their dinnertime conversations. We said, you know, if you're going to be telling family stories and stuff, you know, just tell, tell the stories. And they allowed us to, to tape their, their dinner time talk. And this one family sits there and says, well, let's talk about the time Uncle Billy got murdered and with what, you know, and they went and talked about this. It turns out that the, the, the family had been talking about this a lot because this was something that was a considerably important event in their, in their, their lives. But that turned, that family turned out to be one of the most resilient families that we had because they tended to talk about negative things. They also talked about positive things.
They talked about the, the, the deep downs and the, the high ups.
But I think it has a lot to do, as you say, with how we present it. This is what it says. And if there's a concern and it's a clear concern and you're pretty right about it, they say, you know, Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away. You can do that to me, you know, so if you have some sense of that, you say this happened so long ago that people did this kind of stuff. This is never going to happen here. This is never going to happen with us. If you're sure. But more often than not, more often than not, the kids don't see it the way we do. They just don't.
And we have to see how they respond. A lot of times they'll just say, can I have more chocolate pudding?
Yeah. And you say, okay, that's where we are. Yeah.
[00:46:20] Speaker C: And there's lots more questions to ask. But I want to take things towards the kind of conclusion of our conversation, at least for today. Looking at a little bit about kind of the events of the past now 13 months. There was 401 days since the war started, since hostages have been held in Gaza. And I think a lot of our lives are kind of living in the shadow of what's, what's been happening when we talk about telling stories, telling the Jewish story, telling parsha stories, telling family stories. How do you think the need for kind of telling our story has changed or developed after the events of the past year and 13 months?
[00:46:59] Speaker A: Dr. Du, I mentioned that I was working with, with Anu with the, the museum in Tel Aviv and they are developing a curriculum for, I think it's already in use for dealing with what's happened with the Gaza war and incorporating it into the longer term narrative of the Jewish people to try and take advantage of the fact that we have been through not this specific thing, but we have had many downs and that as a people we are able to rise above. It takes time. And what they're talking about is looking for small ups in the big down and trying to, to, to say there, there's a big oscillation, but within this big oscillation there are smaller oscillations. It's your birthday, you know, we're gonna do a birthday, it kind of gets poor and we're gonna play even though all this stuff is, is going on to try and find ways within that. But I think, I think the, the broad narrative has got to be transmitted, including some things that, you know, sometimes will be left out. You know, is it stuff happened between Egypt and 1948. You know, there are a lot of things that happen, some pretty terrible things in different places. And that's, that's the nature of being Jews.
And I think that that's how it can be placed.
Not played down certainly, and not said to be. Oh, you know, it's a big thing.
But that as a people we, we come back and, and to reassure the kids that we will and, and when you say that to the kids, you're saying it to yourself because I think we all worry about that as well.
[00:48:55] Speaker D: Well, I think over Shabbat I had the salute of being with Aryeh for, for a meal and at, at the Genauer's house and we were, we, we had all discussed, I think we all felt this, this year that it was interesting that on Simchat Torah we noticed that there were more kids than previous years who really stayed for the duration of the Hakafot and of the Simchat Torah celebrations. And Aryeh reflected that he noticed that in Israel as well, that they didn't just come in for the first one and then leave and get candy and run around. They were inside the synagogue, inside the shul space. And I think it really reflected the mood that we all feel this like sense of urgency of where do we go from here and what are we going to do now that October 7th has happened and now that we're in this, this dark place for the Jewish people and the kids feel it, whether they're young or older, they, there was something innate that they knew. Like I need to be here. And I think that in some ways there's this. There was this attempt for them. They really wanted to connect just to the physical Torah. There's a connection that they felt. And I'm going to be in the space. I'm going to be here. And, of course, October 7 happened on Simachat Torah. So it was very visceral, I think, to them as well. And I think it speaks to the moment that we're in, that we're all wondering, like, where do we go? What does the future of the Jewish people look like? And we all know that it's important to know where we're from and what our past is. And that is part of the weekly parsha, that we do this every week so that we have this narrative of tradition. And I know where I'm from. But what's most powerful, I think, about the parsha is that it also tells us where we're going, and it does give us a roadmap for the future. And it's not just the parsha is not just about looking backward, but it's about bringing the parsha weekly to now and telling our children and telling ourselves, like you said, Dr. Duke, that this is. We've been here before, and this is a roadmap to where we can go. What is our mission? What is our future going to look like? How can I map out my future based on what I know from this. This ancient book from our Torah? And I think that the kids feel it and they know it, and I think that we know it also as adults and as a people. And I think that it's. There's a greater sense of urgency, but there's a greater sense of purpose to what we do every week. And that we. We know that in learning the parsha, we are mapping forward and we're mapping our future. And I think that's, for me, where we are.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: So I think. I mean, lots of people, myself, I know myself certainly over the past year and a bit, have been trying to find, like, the voices to help us kind of make sense or process things that have been happening, whether it's on podcasts or articles, and we read different things. Personally, someone I listen to a lot, who I don't always agree with necessarily, is this Israeli journalist, Javid Retigur, if anyone's heard of him. He's very good at kind of explaining things and making sense of things. And he talks a lot about kind of the importance of, like, knowing our story, like, we need to know the story and. And. And we see so much kind of people on that's called on the other side to not take extreme language. But the other side are trying to kind of take our story and invert it or tell us what our story is and, and only highlights the importance for us and for the next generation to like, we need to know our story. Like we've got to have, we want to know it because it's our story. So kind of wrapping things up, like what kind of practical tips, strategies, resources to help us like, guide as we try and encourage our kids to know our stories, to teach our stories to our kids. How can we be, how can we be the best storytellers for our kids and to encourage our kids to be the best storytellers for our Jewish story?
[00:52:58] Speaker A: I think that we can't look for the impact of what we do in the moment that we do it.
Something that we say, a story that we tell, parsha that we discuss will have an impact, but we may not be there when it occurs. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it. It means that we should continue to do it. Because you never know which one of the times that you talk about a particular parsha, that's the one that's going to have the impact because the child is in the right moment, the world is in the right place. I wouldn't say right. The optimal place for this to have the impact.
And so it's our job to keep telling the stories and know that the more we do, the more likely it is they will remember them. And not accurately, by the way, but they will remember them and they'll take from them things that they need. When a moment arises in which they have to make a decision, what do I do?
The family story says, how does my family react? When a situation arises that gives kids guidance, the family doesn't have to be around anymore. The story tells them how their family responds.
And when it comes to the Jewish people, when something happens, knowing the family story of the Jewish people tells us as Jews how to respond.
Even though the ones who originally told us the story or created the story are no longer here.
So this is, this is the long term impact. We tell the story as many times as possible and never know when it's going to show itself. And that's just something we have to live with.
Sometimes their eyes glaze over, sometimes it looks like they're not listening, sometimes they're not listening.
But that's not our job not to make them listen, it's to tell. And that's why, you know, for the book, that's why it's such a beautiful thing, is that it's a way to tell the kids and hope that when they come to a place where the picture is memorable and words are pretty, that they'll hold on to.
[00:55:18] Speaker D: I think one of the, really, one of the most powerful things we can say to our kids is, you know, this week is a parsha that I just. It's a hard parsha. We're in the middle of Sevya Vayikra, and it's not a story and it's a little bit boring. And I don't know a lot about this parsha and just saying that, like, I know this week is parshat acherema, but I don't know a lot about the parsha that is in and of itself very powerful because a, it gets your kids thinking, well, maybe one day I can tell my mom about the parsha and she'll know something about the parsha and that that's very empowering for kids. And it also gives kids permission to say, this is hard and I don't know it. And my parents also don't know it, and that's okay, too. We're always learning together. And I think I've. I found that when we're in, like, the dog days of the Torah, like the Vayikrat and beginning of Amidbar and Samutzvarim, and I like that you love that the best. It's, you know, that's that it is very powerful. And I have found, really, and I've been learning ha Parasha, the book in Hebrew before it came out in English with my kids, that it's an amazing tool for those parshia where that are hard. So if you have the opportunity to get that tool, get the tool because it gives you the language around those parshiyat. But if you just say it's a hard parsha, that in and of itself, I feel is a very powerful tool. It's a hard parsha. I don't know that much about it. I know the name of the parsha and I know that it's tricky. That's, I think, very powerful.
[00:57:03] Speaker B: Thank you so much for joining us for this special episode of the Quran podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation, share it with friends and family as you get ready for Pesach. And don't forget, the Parasha by Emily Amrousi set is
[email protected] and you can get 10% off your entire order with the code podcast at checkout. Wishing you and your families a chag kasher v Sameach. And we will be back with more conversations later this year.
