Community Views

Editor's Notebook

Kids Will Ask
the Darndest Things

Twenty Years Later,
The Same Pronouncements

HE REV. JAMES LYONS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

GARY ROSENBLATT EDITOR

"Do Christians
believe
that
holding
the
cross is protec-
tion against
vampires or
Dracula?" "If a
Christian gets a
'attoo can he/she be buried
-3. a Christian cemetery?"
(Why do Christians bow
town to idols (statues of the
Tirgin Mary and crosses,
I,tc.)?" "If you are a Christian
rtinister how can you be mar-
fed, since priests can't mar-
es?" "How thick is the
Mullet proof glass on the 'pope-
mobile'?"

I

get questions! When I
speak to Jewish youth I
am constantly amazed at
some of the questions they
:onestly raise.
All of us who are educators
ire aware that our best en-
eavors are often set aside by
he latest popular movie. If
• see a "Christian" hold-
uds
' ng a cross before demons and
:=3,7i1 spirits in a movie, they
lave to assume that this is
yhat Christianity is all
'bout. (It isn't!) If kids have
o understanding of Christ-
an theology, it is next to im-
C)ossible for them to
Inderstand the concept of the
l 'xinity or why Christians con-
:iier themselves to be strict-
monotheistic. (We do!)
For many Jewish young
p eople (and adults) Chris-
: 5.anity is equated with
'Catholicism. If kids lump all
Christians together they can't
, Ten begin to understand the
li Tarieties of belief found with-
a. the Christian religion.

i

The major purpose
is to aid youth.

While Catholic priests do not
marry, most Protestant cler-
gy do.) Most Christians would
De shocked to learn that the
statues of the Virgin Mary or
:Tosses in the church are con-
6idered idols.
"Why don't the Jews believe
n Jesus?" "What is kosher?"
Why are Jews buried stand-
up?" "Why do some Jews
;year 'beanies'?" "Why don't
Jews go to church on Sun-
lay?"
It is next to impossible for
most Christians to under-
stand how anybody would not
believe in Jesus. It is such a
-entral core value to Chris-
tians. Religious practices
among Jews seem strange to

r

r

-

The Rev. Lyons is director of the
Ecumenical Institute for
Jewish-Christian Studies in
Southfield.

Christians. Questions about
work on the Sabbath and
keeping kosher are difficult
for Christian kids who have
never had the opportunity of
an honest study of Judaism.
They may intellectually learn
about the separation of milk
and meat but will often ask,
"Why can't they have a
cheeseburger?"
The kippah is something
Protestant kids don't under-
stand at all. Catholic kids see
cardinals and the Pope wear
a "kippah" but don't under-
stand why some Jewish men
do. It gives me an opportuni-
ty to talk about the varieties
of Judaism with the Chris-
tian kids.
Since in many Christian
traditions Sunday is called
the Sabbath, not all Chris-
tians are aware that the Sab-
bath is actually Saturday. A
brief explanation raises the
different question for Chris-
tians, "Why don't we worship
on Saturday?"
One of the dynamics of hav-
ing youth talk together is
that misconceptions about
each other rapidly disappear.
In every dialogue in which I
have been involved I have
discovered that young people
and adults alike are forced to
dig deeply into their own
faith commitments and his-
tory in order to engage in
honest conversation with oth-
ers. Dialogue not only devel-
ops mutual respect but is a
faith-building activity!
Thus, the major purpose of
dialogue between young peo-
ple, and my speaking with
them, is to aid our youth to
appreciate their own tradi-
tions while respecting those
of others.
Ultimately, kids ask the
darndest things because
they've heard their parents
say the darndest things. It is
not only the movies that give
false concepts of the other,
but unexamined or at least
unlearned presentations
within their own traditions.
It is to the credit of the ma-
jor Christian denominations
that in the last 25 years a se-
rious effort has been made to
avoid stereotypes and/or false
presentations of Jewish posi-
tions and practices.
When we reach a time that
we allow people to define
themselves, we will enter into
a new period of mutuality
where the things we hold in
common will be recognized
and the differences will be
celebrated with respect.
P.S. I don't know how thick
the glass is in the "popemo-
bile" nor do I know where the
idea that Jews are buried
standing up comes from.

❑

Want to know
why it's easy
to be cynical
about grand
pronounce-
ments from
the organized
Jewish com-
munity responding to crises
of American Jewish sur-
vival?
Here's a quote from the
Council of Jewish Federa-
tion's Task Force on Jewish
Identity. Read it and con-
sider what's unusual about
it:
The report speaks of "set-
ting in motion a new effort,
dealing with the realm of
identity and spirit of the
Jewish community in North
America . . . a landmark
move toward preservation
and renewal of the Jews
and of Jewish life" to re-
spond to assimilation and
failures in Jewish educa-
tion. "The question is not
whether we are obliged to
respond," the report con-
cludes, "but how."

This past week, as I
heard Jewish leader after
Jewish leader at the Gen-
eral Assembly in New York
call for an innovative re-
sponse to the crisis of as-
similation, I could not help
but think back to the sad
saga of the Institute — how
it began with great fanfare
and ended with hardly any
notice.
What lessons are there to
be learned from the noble
experiment? A dozen years
ago, I spent six weeks re-
searching that topic, inter-
viewing scores of experts
and participants, and writ-
ing a 15,000-word analysis,
so it's difficult to sum up in
a phrase or two here. Suf-
fice it to say that some of
the key factors that doomed
the Institute to oblivion
have changed. Today, there
is greater awareness among
the leadership of the Jew-
ish community of the prob-
lems facing us and there is
greater willingness to re-
spond. In part, because the

Jewish Book Fair: Just a small part of the Identity crisis answer.

The surprise is that this
report is not from last
week's General Assembly,
which announced the cre-
ation of a Task Force on
Jewish Identity to combat
assimilation.
It's from a task force dat-
ed June 14, 1971.
So, one might ask, if that
report was issued more
than 21 years ago, why do
we need another task force
to deal with the same issues
today?
Good question.
The original task force led
to the establishment of the
Institute for Jewish Life, an
agency whose mandate was
to reinvigorate Jewish iden-
tity and counter the
increasing rate of assimila-
tion. The grand experiment
lasted four years, the victim
of high expectations and
low funding.

crisis itself has grown more
serious.
But some of the turf is-
sues — between CJF and
local federations, and be-
tween synagogues and fed-
erations, for example —
still remain. A major prob-
lem in providing funding for

We can't afford to
wait until next
year's GA to hear
about a consensus
position.

the Institute was that while
CJF, the umbrella group of
more than 200 federations
in the U.S. and Canada, can
recommend that local fed-
erations support a project,
it cannot enforce that they

pay up. And local commu-
nities simply did not pro-
vide financial support for
the Institute.
This problem of shtetlism
still persists among some
local federations that can-
not see beyond their own
community's interest. But
collective responsibility be-
came a reality when feder-
ations agreed to tax
themselves as part of the
Operation Exodus mission
to save and resettle Soviet
Jews. Would they tax them-
selves in a similar way for
Jewish identity programs?
For all of the discussion
of Jewish spiritual renewal
at last week's General As-
sembly, there was relative-
ly little talk of involving
synagogues and rabbis. But
the obvious point remains
that you can't ignite Jewish
sparks without engaging in
Judaism. And at least until
now, federations have
avoided issues of theology
and spirituality as poten-
tially too divisive for a con-
sensus-based organization.
The calls for action in
New York last week were
compelling and sincere, but
GA veterans remain cyni-
cal about eloquent propos-
als that never quite pan
out. Consider this quote
from Judah Shapiro, the
late director of the Nation-
al Foundation for Jewish
Culture, who recalled, when
I interviewed him 12 years
ago, the bitter experience of
how the National Founda-
tion was created amid great
fanfare in 1958. (It's still
around today, but was nev-
er given the funding or
clout initially promised.)
"It's part of the CJF tra-
dition to do the heroic and
the dramatic at the Gener-
al Assembly, like creating
this new venture, and then
not following through," Mr.
Shapiro said. ". . . The del-
egates stood and cheered,
but that's where the excite-
ment ended."
In fairness, there are pos-
itive signs to suggest that
federation leaders may be
more enlightened today.
For one, many lay leaders
and professional staffers
are in their 40s and may
themselves have been
among the student protest-
ers calling for more radical
change in the late 1960s
and early '70s.
In addition, this year's
GA, for the first time, fea-
tured a two-hour session in
which more than 80 rabbis
and educators studied Jew-

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