Send them outside.
The home has become an empty nest
even before the kids have flown the coop.
That is wrong. Parents are gods to their
children in their formative years. Parents
create memories that support our lives.
Parents teach by the songs they sing, the
stories they tell, the poetry they recite, by
the sayings of the fathers and the mothers.
Children pick up parental convictions
and beliefs, and where there are none, a
vacuum is created that is readily filled by
gurus and sects and cults. Again, the prob-
lem is not with the proselytizers out there,
but within. As Chesterton put it, "Where
man ceases believing in something, it isn't
that he believes in nothing, but that he
believes in anything." Human nature
abhors a vacuum. The vacuum is in the
home.
Surveys and studies of religious schools
of all denominations have shown repeated-
ly that "a school cannot be expected to
carry out a religious socialization process
for which there is little sympathy at home"
(Greeley and Rossi, The Education of Cath-
olic Americans, 1966).
The school can teach dates, history, and
geography, but not the language that
penetrates the soul.
The Jewish family is in trouble. Scat-
tered, shattered, and shriveled, it has been
left to fend for itself, to shoulder respon-
sibilities it cannot bear on its own. The
family is unsupported culturally, spiritu-
ally, morally, ritually. The chasm between
public institutions and the private sector
of the family must be overcome.
It cannot be done by institutional sur-
rogation. The family cannot be bypassed.
The family cannot function vicariously.
My grandfather came to the synagogue
because he was a Jew. His grandchildren
join to become Jewish. But the synagogue
is not mishpachah (family), the sanctuary
is not the home, and it cannot pretend
otherwise: public sanctuaries are not
private homes.
For decades the synagogue has attempt-
ed to fill the gap by assuming the role of
family. In the process the house was emp-
tied. The Sukkah adjoins the walls of the
synagogue; the lulav and etrog have be-
come properties of the institution. The
Passover Seder has been removed from the
living room to the social hall, the Hag-
gadah has been taken out of the hands of
the family into the hands of the rabbinic
and cantorial officiants.
The family has been projected outward,
externalized, congregationalized. In-
advertently, the institution has robbed the
home of its sancta.
Reclaim The Home
This must change. It is easier to substi-
tute for the parent than to motivate and
teach the parent to parent. It is easier to
lecture than to turn the student into a lec-
turer himself. It is easier to give charity
than to help a fellowman learn to support
himself. But to offer the family parenting
competence and confidence is the highest
and most significant task confronting the
community. It is easier to outreach than
to inreach.
The Jewish family needs to be strength-
ened and confirmed. The Jewish home
needs to be reclaimed. The parental roles
need to be restored. This means that the
public institutions must redirect their in-
tents, energies and projects to enter the
home and restore its moral, cultural and
spiritual centrality. The public rhetoric,
Public Jews are spiritually
unsupported. Even in their
private castles they are
overwhelmed by a mass
culture that has penetrated
the walls.
rituals and issues must be personalized,
harmonized, familiarized so that they
become part of the table talk. The songs
and stories and ritual choreography heard
and seen in the public square must be
brought back to the family. The family
must be freed from its muteness and its ex-
pressivity encouraged.
This is a call to public institutions: the
community requires mechanchei mish-
pachah, family educators, a cadre of men
and women motivated by one superordi-
nate goal, one major task: the empower-
ment of the family.
The teleology of the mechanchei mish-
pachah turns to a new methodology. Their
world is not of textbooks and blackboards
and tests, knowledge for the sake of
knowledge. Their world is the home, their
desk is the table, their students are
members of the family, their tests are the
Sabbaths and festivals, the rites of family
passage, the table talk. The goal is for
Jewish expressivity, Jewish competence,
performance, Jewish doing, speaking, sing-
ing, decision-making It is a far cry from
the passive audience of adult education.
They are to be trained to do, to learn in
order to teach, to become ancestors, to en-
courage questions.
Jews need Jews to be Jewish. Mish-
pachot need mishpachot to become mish-
pachot. The community's task is to match
mishpachot so that they join at each
other's tables to share stories, to learn from
each other the art of raising Jewish
children, to enjoy their Jewishness — and
to know that within the larger circles of
their affiliation there are skilled and car-
ing friends of the family to enrich their
lives.
There is a need for "perestroika" —
restructuring of public institutions. The
models of the havurah and the para-Judaic
counselor were meant to decentralize and
personalize the members of the institu-
tional megastructure. Their skills and
goals may be refined and readjusted to
enter the sanctuary of the home, wherein
lie the most powerful energies for our sani-
ty and sanctity.
It is not in the institutions above or
beyond the seas but within us, and in our
families. A Chasidic master toward the
end of his days looked back at his life's
choices. "When I was young, I thought to
repair the world. When I grew older, I
thought it wiser to begin with my own
village. Older yet, I thought to begin the
repair with my own family and myself. I
regret nothing of those decisions. I only
wish that I had first begun with my fami-
ly and myself."
It is time to reach in.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
31