Of Forests, Trees and SAT's

Myopia is not just a problem for optometrists.  We suffer from it abroad and in our own backyard.  Among other things, it affects how men and women relate to one another and how children approach their responsibilities.  

I’ll start in Jerusalem and then bring it closer to home.  

There is a new campaign being launched in Israel today by the New Israel Fund.  As described in a recent Ha’aretz article, it seems that there are fewer and fewer pictures of women being displayed publicly in Jerusalem.

It isn’t just a lack of women in bathing suits we’re talking about; it’s fewer and fewer pictures of women altogether as advertisers are increasingly coming under pressure by ultra-Orthodox groups.

So the New Israel Fund decided to launch a campaign.  The campaign is called “women should be seen and heard.”  Specifically, it was started by a group dedicated to maintaining basic equality and tolerance in Jerusalem – a group calling themselves Yerushalmim, residents of Jerusalem.

Anyway, here’s how the campaign works.  People are being asked to print a paper with the phrase “women should be seen and heard” and women, especially are being asked to take a picture of themselves holding up the sign.  Men are encouraged to take pictures of themselves holding the sign alone or, preferably, standing next to a woman. 

The message is a powerful one, of course, and all of us who have noticed a growing hegemony of ultra-Orthodoxy, especially in Jerusalem, appreciate the message.

For me, the trend that this campaign is fighting is emblematic of the problem of myopia, a failure to appreciate the larger picture or, as often described colloquially, “missing the forest for the trees.”

I understand a concern for modesty.  Reasonable people can disagree about whether scantily clad models should appear in billboards, though I would urge that whatever standards of modesty are agreed upon should apply equally to men and women.

What disturbs me is that in the effort to preserve modesty, a thorough separation takes place such that women are increasingly relegated to the private realm.  As a result, they are not seen and, frankly, not really heard either.

You tell me how we got from male and female created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), from Sarah who shows Abraham the way, Rebecca without whom the succession of the nation would have been a mess and Deborah who judges and defends her people, to severely curtailed appearance of women, altogether.

The myopia that I detect here is troubling.  In the interest of maintaining the value of modesty with increasingly harsh strictures, the value of male and female equally reflective of God’s image and equally instrumental in impacting upon the national destiny is much diminished. 

I’m happy for this new campaign and hope it is successful.

Myopia is, curiously, a “wide-spread” problem.

Leaving Jerusalem, we can think of many examples in our own backyard of how we lose sight of what’s essential.

I want to address one area in which we are not as far-sighted as we should be, and that is the way that we support how children learn, particularly when they reach High School.

The recent instances of SAT cheating in several New York suburbs was described several weeks ago in the New York Times.

Clearly, there are numerous forces at work here and I would hesitate to posit with certainty what motivated those students who were involved with the cheating.

But I must say, based on my observations, that part of the problem is a failure on the part of schools and homes to establish an educational environment that places emphasis in the right places.

As a parent, I wonder if we are asking all the right questions when we inquire about our children’s education.  How often do we ask our children, “How did your test go?”  or “Did you get anything back today? How’d you do?”

Very often, I suspect.  And that’s fine.  Parents should ask those questions.  But too often, those are the only, or predominant, questions that we ask.

By contrast, how often do we ask, “What did you learn about Hamlet today?”  “What was dissecting the fetal pig like?”  “What interesting thing did you learn about the American Revolution today?”  I know that teens don’t often like to give extended answers to these kinds of questions, if they answer them at all.  But just asking these questions shows our children what we value.  How often do we engage the content and the excitement of the learning, rather than the letter or number that is often only one measure of the outcome of that learning?

I don’t think we ask those questions so much.  Unfortunately, overtly and subtly, our emphasis impacts that of our children.  So we shouldn’t wonder why many students emphasize grades, test scores and competition with each other, often at the expense of the inherent value of learning.

And while there’s no excuse for a young man or woman’s choice to cheat, we all need to take a look at the repercussions, large and small, of an atmosphere that emphasizes “what did you get” over “what did you learn” and that gives the impression that performance matters more than integrity. 

The Talmud doesn’t say anything about filling in all the bubbles with a number 2 pencil.  But the Talmud does tell a story about a sage who was too ill to attend the daily lecture and asked his colleagues to fill him in on what transpired.  Who was speaking today?  He asked.  And what hidush, what new insight, did he bring?

The message of that story is that learning is inherently valuable, that a good insight is something worth inquiring about, something that gives a person strength and motivation even during difficult times.  The attitude implied in this story rises to the level of legacy, of grand vision, the very antithesis of myopia.

What a different place we would be in, if we talked to our children and grandchildren about the amazing way Shakespeare uses a soliloquy to reflect a person’s inner life, about how gross and cool it is to slice through the viscera of a fetal pig to see what the organs look like, about how interesting it is that in the book of Genesis our heroes stumble and often rise to the occasion, again and again.

What a different place we would be in if we asked about our children’s character at least as often as their grades.

To the extent that we express it, our inquisitiveness and that of the teachers will help encourage the natural inquisitiveness that students have.

A genuine appreciation for the gift of learning will be beneficial long after the grades and scores become a distant memory.

We also need to talk and live in ways that demonstrate that integrity is at least as important as performance.  How often do we ask children if they helped anyone out today?  Or how it felt for them to finish an essay through their own effort, on their own steam? 

We have to get past our myopia.  We notice when bearded folk in Jerusalem act myopically, yet we all do it.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  But it’s very hard not to get dragged down, because of all of the familiar pressures that we face.   I know that test scores matter.  And grades matter. 

But we can’t forget the bigger picture. 

When he leaves Canaan, Jacob has a dream of a ladder standing on the earth, reaching up toward heaven. 

God connects him to his past and tells him that in the future, his descendants will be a source of blessing for the whole world.

Jacob gets pretty bogged down after that, with two wives, two concubines, no end of squabbles and a controlling father-in-law, what in Yiddish would be called a leibedicke velt, literally a lively world, though the connotation is a real complicated mess. 

Eventually, Jacob starts dreaming about the sheep in his flock and how he’ll be able to outsmart his father-in-law as a herdsman. 

At that point God tells him that it's time to leave that place and head back to the land of his father and grandfather.  My teacher, Rabbi Simon Greenberg, paraphrased God’s statement as follows: “You used to dream about heaven and earth and now you’re dreaming about sheep?  Time to go home!  Time to remember the big dream."

I say that to each of us.  The Jewish tradition is not a perfect tradition, but it’s a tradition that long ago sought to bring blessing to all humanity.  That includes the voices and visions of men and women.  That includes the value of integrity.  That includes an appreciation for learning as a source of insight and uplift, not just as a means for getting you through the next hoop. 

Whether we’re unduly focused on covering female wrists in Jerusalem or the difference between an A and an A+ in a New York suburb, it’s time for us to refocus our vision, time to pan out the video.  Time to go home, in fact, just like it was for Jacob. 

Home to our essential identity as children of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, charged and able to bring blessing to the world.

Originally delivered on December 3, 2011 at Temple Israel of Great Neck