She is cool, playful with her students and a little over the top.On the other hand, we are seeing a rabbi who is trying to connect with kids and seems to be succeeding.
Rabbi Rebecca wants to hold kids to the synagogue’s educational standards. As they say, this is “good for the Jews.”I loved Adam Sandler, and I loved his daughters. I liked seeing so many kids, in all their diversity, in a synagogue, which was played by Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto. The overfocus on celebration is not an image American Jews want to promote — for ourselves and for our young people. We are so much better, so much deeper than this.In the world of supplemental Jewish learning , bar/bat mitzvah has cannibalized Jewish education. To quote one of my colleagues: We “teach to the test” — the ceremony.
Precisely at a time in their lives when kids are capable of higher thinking, of grappling with the real issues of life, and precisely at the time when their Jewish identity will come under the most challenges — the vast majority of Jewish kids will be stuck with 12-year-old notions of Judaism and Jewish life.It was good to hear Adam Sandler yelling at his real-life daughter, getting her to study her haftarah.Here is the thing.