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On The Bench
The Pokemon phenomenon
highlights the struggle between Jewish
values and popular culture.
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CHARLOTTE HILDEBRAND HARJO
Special to the Jewish News
r
usajiro Yamauchi did not
foresee the fuss surrounding
the Pokemon phenomenon
when he began manufactur-
ing Japanese playing cards in Kyoto in
1889.
Jump ahead to 1996, when
Nintendo Co. Ltd. of Japan — whose
current president is Mr. Yamauchi's
great-grandson — developed a Game
Boy game called "Pokemon," based on
the Japanese card game "Pocket
Monsters."
In 1998, Nintendo introduced
Pokemon for Game Boy to North
America, and in January 1999 — yes,
folks, it's only been one year —
Wizards of the Coast licensed the
Pokemon trading card game from ,
Nintendo for American audiences.
Since the debut of the Pokemon
trading card game, more than 3 mil-
lion starter-sets have been sold. Now,
that's a lot of pocket monsters.
The phenomenon of Pokemon has
taken us all by storm — concerned
parents, educators, religious-school
administrators, rabbis.
We wonder, "How far do we go
with this Pokemon craze, a craze
seemingly more powerful than any-
thing else in years? How much do we
spend, where do we set the limits of
play, and, ultimately, is this phenome-
non good or bad for our children?'
"The challenge with Pokemon, as
with anything else," says Rabbi
Steven Carr Reuben, author of
Children of Character: Leading your
Children to Ethical Choices in
Everyday Life, "is how do we incor-
porate our Jewish values, handed
down for thousands of years, and
relate them to specific American cul-
tural experiences on a day-to-day
basis? I don't see them as opposite. I
see them as completely compatible.
Charlotte Hildebrand Harjo is
a contributing writer to the Jewish
Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
How do we bring harmony to both?
"When it comes to Pokemon,
identify your own values," Reuben
advises parents. "Then act based on
those values. For instance, if you
want to teach compassion, encour-
age your children who have cards to
share with those who don't; if you
want to teach integrity, talk to your
kids about being honest when trad-
ing. Have your children ask, 'What
would the world be like if everybody
acts the way I am acting?' This is an
important lesson to impart."
Despite the lessons to be learned,
the Pokemon craze has caused corn-
motion in and out of classrooms in
schools across the country, and now
it's impacting the observance of
Shabbat.
"Instead of Shabbat being a time to
focus on family, community, God and
Torah," says Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of
B'nai David Judea, children at his Los
Angeles-area synagogue were focusing
on trading Pokemon cards.
"Children would come to shul
with their backpacks full and begin
negotiating, exactly the way adults buy
and sell stocks the other five days of
the week," Kanefsky recalls. "It was
impossible to draw them out of it."
He eventually sent home a letter
to the parents banning Pokemon from
shul.
"For me it was a Shabbat issue
— about there being no commercial
transactions — and a distraction
issue," he says.
As a father of a 6-year-old and a
10-year-old, Kanefsky confesses he
sees no value in the game, but he did
state that Pokemon presents a wonder-
ful opportunity for parents to teach
the more subtle lessons of stealing.
"In Leviticus, Chapter 19, Verse
14, it says you should not 'place a
stumbling block before the blind,"'
Kanefsky points out.
In the halachic interpretation, he
says, it's a figurative blindness, mean-
ing you should not lead the unwary
astray. In Pokemon terms, it means
not taking advantage of someone's