This morning I realized that amidst all the (metaphorical) balls in the air, I accidentally dropped a few. My husband and I accidentally left the baby's stroller in the car he took to work today, which meant that our au pair has no stroller to use for the day. I also meant to help my three year-old write thank you cards for his preschool teachers to give to them at today's year-end celebration, and I completely forgot about it over the weekend. Such is life with two kids - there are way too many details to keep track of everything and not drop a few balls some of the time.
Since becoming a parent more than 3 years ago, I have developed a new-found respect for and understanding of parents in our synagogue community. I used to be frustrated when parents forgot about Religious School family programs, or forgot about a change in the Religious School schedule... but now I 'get it'... not just intellectually, but viscerally, emotionally. Being a parent is hard in many ways, and one of the challenges is to keep all the various 'balls' in the air. I've come to learn that all of us 'drop the ball' sometimes!
The question for me as a Jewish educator is, "How do we help parents keep the 'Jewish education' ball in the air?" If we send extra emails, parents get annoyed that we email too much. If we don't send an extra reminder email, then it's easy to forget when special events are happening, or what's going on in the synagogue and in the Religious School. As an educator, I find it difficult to balance "too much information" vs. "not enough information." As a parent, I understand well both sides of the coin... I want the reminders, but I'm also overwhelmed with emails, calendar changes, and yes, details. Such is life in the 21st century, I suppose!
Monday, June 4, 2012
Friday, June 1, 2012
Hoffman Blog Recommendations
Wow, it's been awhile since I've written on this blog! I was out on maternity leave for a couple of months, and now I'm finally getting back into the swing of things. As we head into the summer months, I thought I'd suggest a few terrific blogs to read / follow... by a father/son duo...
The first blog I recommend reading is called "God Didn't Say That." It's by Dr. Joel Hoffman, who is an expert in Hebrew / biblical translations. Many of his posts are fascinating, including one I read recently that's called "Sometimes the right word is the wrong word to use when translating the Bible." His post reminds me of something I learned in rabbinical school, which is that translating literally from one language to another doesn't necessarily tell you what the original text meant. For example... let's say you were living two thousand years from now (i.e. in the year 4012), speaking a completely different language, and you 'discovered' a copy of the New York Times (in English) from our current era. The headline of the paper said "Wall Street Crashed Yesterday", and you were trying to translate it from English into your current language. Using a dictionary, you looked up the words "wall", "street", "crash", and "yesterday," and you would probably assume that the article was referring to a street that had a wall on it or near it, and the wall fell down yesterday. Obviously you and I know that that has nothing to do with the real meaning of the headline... but that's because we know what the phrase "Wall Street" means, and what it means when Wall Street "crashes" - it's not at all about a street with a wall. As this little example highlights, translation can be a very tricky business, especially when we are translating texts from hundreds or even thousands of years ago!
The second blog I want to recommend is by my former professor and mentor, Rabbi/Dr Larry Hoffman (father of Joel Hoffman). Rabbi Hoffman is an expert in liturgy, worship, and ritual (among other things), and his blog is called Life and a Little Liturgy. His posts are fascinating, including his latest, "The Bible is Fiction" as well as one from a couple weeks ago called "Why we need synagogues, or what synagogues need to be."
Hope you find these blogs thought-provoking... let me know if you have any responses and/or questions for me to address here!
The first blog I recommend reading is called "God Didn't Say That." It's by Dr. Joel Hoffman, who is an expert in Hebrew / biblical translations. Many of his posts are fascinating, including one I read recently that's called "Sometimes the right word is the wrong word to use when translating the Bible." His post reminds me of something I learned in rabbinical school, which is that translating literally from one language to another doesn't necessarily tell you what the original text meant. For example... let's say you were living two thousand years from now (i.e. in the year 4012), speaking a completely different language, and you 'discovered' a copy of the New York Times (in English) from our current era. The headline of the paper said "Wall Street Crashed Yesterday", and you were trying to translate it from English into your current language. Using a dictionary, you looked up the words "wall", "street", "crash", and "yesterday," and you would probably assume that the article was referring to a street that had a wall on it or near it, and the wall fell down yesterday. Obviously you and I know that that has nothing to do with the real meaning of the headline... but that's because we know what the phrase "Wall Street" means, and what it means when Wall Street "crashes" - it's not at all about a street with a wall. As this little example highlights, translation can be a very tricky business, especially when we are translating texts from hundreds or even thousands of years ago!
The second blog I want to recommend is by my former professor and mentor, Rabbi/Dr Larry Hoffman (father of Joel Hoffman). Rabbi Hoffman is an expert in liturgy, worship, and ritual (among other things), and his blog is called Life and a Little Liturgy. His posts are fascinating, including his latest, "The Bible is Fiction" as well as one from a couple weeks ago called "Why we need synagogues, or what synagogues need to be."
Hope you find these blogs thought-provoking... let me know if you have any responses and/or questions for me to address here!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)