In Over My Head

(Shifra)

My student's sister is deathly ill. We are learning about praying for rain, (Ta'anit) and expecting G-d to answer us. This girl came into class and said "I don't mean to offend you, Ms. Kaufman, but I can't really do this work right now because I'm really angry at G-d for making my sister so sick." And I know it's because she's been praying, and because they still don't know anything but the basics they learned in Kindergarten with some frum teacher that G-d answers prayers.

I don't know how to say that sometimes He doesn't answer, and sometimes He says no.

So we are going to take a detour, my class and I, to talk about the thing that bothers them a lot more than if those Mishna dudes ever got rain. It's not getting off topic; in fact I wonder if it's the first ON topic thing we've done all year.

Obviously the principal and the guidance counselor and my mentor etc want me to "just bring in the Head of School, who's also a rabbi, and let him talk to them about it and give them some feel-good answers". No shock to you who know me that I don't want to do that. And then they yell at me for biting off more than I can chew in my first year.

But isn't this what first years are about? About not being stuck in your ways enough that you really enjoy the rollar coaster in which you never know what things you'll do tomorrow? I say, embrace the ability to just take a week and talk about the touchiest subject in all of religion. Sure, why not? At least this class, when they graduate, will be able to say that they thought about things that mattered in Judaics classes, that there was a teacher willing to engage the big picture.

It all comes back again to them being able to think. Are we helping them by leaving them with pat answers? By encouraging more of them? I think it would help them more to interview people who don't know, won't know, and think we can't know, and see that sometimes, there just aren't answers and the only thing left is to dream up your own.