Family education

Learning together, the Reconstructionist way

Started in Fall 2000, Shir Hadash's monthly Family Education program is for families with children ages 7 through 12. It usually meets from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on the fourth Saturday of each month in our space at Congregation Beth El Ner Tamid. Participants engage in a wide range of activities, such as arts and crafts, drama, music, and cooking.   

The curriculum approaches such topics as mitzvot and Jewish identity from a Reconstructionist perspective. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, was committed to the totality of Jewish experience; evolving folk customs and traditions were as important, and as authentic a source of Jewish expression, as the tradition interpreted by the rabbis and codified in the Talmud.  

Thus, when we studied the mitzvah of keeping kosher, we learned what our traditional sources teach us about this mitzvah, and we discussed contemporary folk practices like ethical kashrut that ask us if it is kosher to eat food that is harvested by workers who are exploited or that comes from animals that are injected with harmful chemicals.   

Similarly, a traditional answer to the question who is a Jew is "anyone born of a Jewish mother."  In recent times, the Reconstructionist movement "reconstructed" this traditional view and asserted that anyone born of a Jewish father is also Jewish. And in Nazi Germany, anyone who had a Jewish grandparent was considered Jewish. We tried to figure out what else besides the accident of birth determines Jewish identity, and we designed our own "Jewish" T-shirts. 

Sandy Brusin is our Family Education Coordinator.

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