Photo by bill Hansen
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How ancient wisdom
can make better
parents today.
Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen at the ewish Community
West Bloomfield.
describes his own parents as "very loving people,"
who
"gave lots of room to every child to fulfill his
AppleTree Editor
or her potential." They also encouraged their chil-
here was a time when Rabbi Lawrence i dren to commit to making the world a better
place.
Kelemen viewed a child's temper
As an adult, Rabbi Kelemen attended the
tantrum as an opportunity to teach.
University of California at Los Angeles and did
postgraduate work in education at Harvard
Then he became educated himself.
University.
Gone was the spanking, the lecturing, the
It was his interest in education that brought
threats. Instead, Rabbi Kelemen began implement-
Rabbi
Kelemen to Denmark. He had been
: ing an approach advocated more than 3,000 years
impressed by the resistance Danes had shown the
ago -- an approach that focuses not on changing
Nazis during World War II, and learned many of
the child, but on changing the parent.
these men and women had taken their stren gth
Rabbi Kelemen, author of To Kindle A Soul:
from ethics classes at school.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Parents and Teachers,
"Then," Rabbi Kelemen said, "I got a hot tip":
Visited Detroit last week as part of a national tour,
If
you really want to learn about ethics in action,
speaking to parents, teachers and educators. He
check
out the Orthodox community in Israel.
talked both about better ways to parent and how
Rabbi
Kelemen said his parents "raised their
to address children's concerns in the wake of the
children with a strong Jewish identity," but his •
terrorist attacks on America.
childhood home was not Orthodox. Although he
The Los Angeles native, who now lives in Israel,
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
was interested in learning more, he was not con-
vinced that Orthodox Judaism held the answer.
Then he saw it himself. "I went to Israel to learn
how to make good people," he said. "And I fell in
love with everything."
The book he would one day write, To Kindle A
Soul, focuses on how to "transform a parent," he
said. But first Rabbi Kelemen underwent a trans-
formation himself
Once a professional downhill skiing instructor
and news director for a radio station in California,
Rabbi Kelemen was so impressed by Orthodox life
in Israel that he became observant and today works
as a professor of education at Neve Yerushalayim
College of Jewish Studies for Women, in
Jerusalem.
Among the scholars he met along his journey
was Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, whom he (-nits "a great
sage." The rabbi had written a small.pamphlet,
Planting and Building, which would become a key
inspiration for To Kindle A Soul.
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