I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting a lot of ads from markets these days. Not like a supermarket, but a betting market. Polymarket, Kalshi—there are all sorts of websites now, where you can bet on everything. Not just sports, but also the weather and politics. And it seems to just add to that general feeling of dehumanization, that ick, the young kids might say. The sense that the world is getting increasingly fractured and colder. And that’s not just due to climate collapse. That’s about how we treat each other. It seems like everything is being commodified and marketized and monetized. That can make the world feel less alive. It can make us feel less like people, and can make other people feel less human to us.
I think that Judaism is countercultural, and that Jewish education can be, and maybe even has the obligation to be countercultural. If we believe in our hearts that everyone has full worth just by being a human being, that you actually can’t put a price tag on a person (or on the earth for that matter): How do we live those values in what we actually do? Not just talking about those things, but doing them? The key to me, or one way we might want to rephrase it: What would it look like to think about our work as a gift? Now, it can’t truly be part of a “gift economy”, because we do live under capitalism. We will need to have money in exchange for goods and services. But I do think that a switch to thinking about what we have to offer and who we serve in terms of gifts can help us offer something that can be an antidote to this fraught and fractured world.
At the beginning of my Jewish education journey, I noticed, looking back now, that I was very quick to put blame on the parents [and caregivers]. Oh, they drop off their kids, they don’t stay for services. If only they did that, then we really could… Really could what? There was so much animosity, as if the parents were the roadblock in our way to Jewishly educating their child. I still hear that chatter today, and I totally understand it. Teachers and education directors are put through a lot and a lot is asked of them, but a lot is also asked of parents these days as well.
Parents right now are dealing with so much: Social media, the economy, climate collapse. Instead of asking: Why don’t more parents come into our building? What if instead, I saw whatever time and presence they did bring us as a gift?
I think about this in relation to the High Holidays a lot. Because sociologically, the High Holy Says are when most American Jews go to synagogue. And it can be very easy to use that time to say: “Hey! Why don’t you come to synagogue more?” I wonder if that’s aligned with our values. I don’t think the guilt is working. What if instead, when we are planning our offerings, [we] see their presence and time as a gift? Then the question becomes, what gift do we give them in return? In the book, The Gift by Lewis Hyde, he explores gift economies and how gifts circulate. With a commodity [transaction], there is an exchange of money and the relationship ends. But a gift creates relationship, and inspires more gift. So, if the presence and time of the parents and caregivers of our students is a gift, what gift can we give them in return?
The gift of Jewish sacred heritage.
Because it can also transform what we do, to think about what we do as a gift in and of itself. The goal moves from, “How can we get more butts and seats?” to “We are offering this as a gift because we think that it could make your life better. Your family more connected. We think it’s an antidote to a lot of the challenges of our world.” And the beautiful thing is we are giving a gift to people that is already theirs. Sometimes I think about my work in Jewish education, or my goal, as showing people the treasure that is buried in their own backyard. So many people are out seeking this treasure. Maybe of deeper connections, a meaningful life. And they don’t know that they have this treasure all along. My job is to pick up maybe a couple of gems, show it to them. But more than that, it is to teach them how to dig, so that they can always go back when they want to. But the gift is already theirs. 1 Chronicles 29:14 says, “Who am I and who are my people that we should have the means to make such a free will offering? But all is from You, and it is Your gift that we have given to You.” [While this is about g?d’s gifts, it works here as well. We are giving our people a gift that is already theirs, that g?d gave to each of us.]
If we think of the Earth as a gift, something that we did not do anything to earn, but that we are receiving out of grace, not a resource to be extracted, might we take more care, better care, of our Earth? If we see the parents and families that are a part of our communities as a gift, might we view them with compassion and seek to offer them something meaningful in response to the gift of their presence? And if we see Judaism itself as a gift, can that transform what we share and how?
I’ve stopped using the language of Jewish continuity. For me, it often seemed like the people pushing continuity were showing up to the next generation and handing them a big box and saying, “This is the box. Your job—your only job—is to pass this box to the next generation. Don’t look inside. What’s inside doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is to pass down the box.” And then you might open the box and find it empty because it was never really about what was inside the box.
If we believe that Judaism has within it the tools to help us make deeper, more enriched, more meaningful lives and to repair the world, then that is a gift.
Thinking of my teaching as a gift, and Judaism as a gift, has also transformed my own teaching, especially with middle and high school students. My primary field is prayer, t’fillah. And I’ll tell my students outright: “I’m here praying and leading with you today, because I wanted to give you this gift. Once you give someone a gift, is it up to you what they do with it? No. Once you give a gift, it belongs to them. So, I’m going to invite you into different practices that our spiritual ancestors through the words of the prayerbook are inviting us to do. Reminders that we have inherent worth. Reminders that we are unconditionally loved. Invitations to notice the world with gratitude and awe. That is a gift. Which means you can accept it and open it now, or you can open it when you get home. You can put it on a shelf and forget about it, and then suddenly remember 10 years from now. And guess what? It will still be yours.”
I then am able to come at my teaching from a place of deep love. I care about these people, and so I’m giving them this gift. So I don’t necessarily measure success anymore based on how many kids are singing along. Sure, I use my song leader tools and techniques to make it more inviting and able to sing along, but developmentally, not all of those kids are going to sing with me. But the singing is not the point. The singing is a means of getting to the gift. And the gift is something that they have.
What might change if we start to see our relationship with those we serve as one of a gift? In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay The Serviceberry, (which I’m listening to on audiobook right now and is probably why I have gifts on my mind), she looks at the natural world as a model for what an ecosystem based on gifts could look like. She names other ways in which we can bring little pieces of a gift economy into our regular lives, like little free libraries, clothing swaps, buy-nothing groups. And even though those are small in nature, and can’t each on their own replace the system of economy we have now, she reminds us that they are still important because they show us a different way.
I cherish the notion of the gift economy. That we might back away from the grinding system that reduces everything to a commodity, and leaves most of us bereft of what we really want: A sense of belonging, and relationship, and purpose, and beauty, which can never be commoditized.
In this age of the blockchain and the marketization of everything, let our Jewish communities be places of warmth and human connection, where we are not engaging in transaction, but have the amazing opportunity to give gifts to each other.