Who Really Has Influence?

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, October 20, 2006

A survey done a couple of years ago asked Jewish college students who influenced them in what they felt about their religion: 84% said their father, 88 % said their mother, and 30% said their rabbi.

On the one hand, if you are a rabbi, this could be a depressing statistic. All those hours with the Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, all those late nights on the Confirmation weekend, and only 30% of the kids felt rabbis were an important influence. My husband, by way of comfort, pointed out that only 50% of American Jews are affiliated. I guess it’s hard for a rabbi to be a positive influence when families are not part of the congregation. Well, at least rabbis came out higher than television.

As a rabbi I may have had my twinge of disappointment with this survey, but as a parent, I was delighted. The survey confirmed the importance of what goes on at home. It may remind those of us who are now adults of the influence our own parents had on our religious development. Whether we practice our religion in the same way as our parents, or even practice a different religion, I imagine many of us can recognize the traces of parental influence.

The survey can also be a goad to our own activity as parents and for those in mentoring relationships with young people. Rather than leaving religion to the experts, it gives parents the incentive to keep a hand in on this important topic whatever your children’s age. Often as a parent you feel that your words don’t mean much to your kids, that they listen to everyone else more than they are paying attention to you. It starts when they come home from pre-school enthralled with their teacher’s wisdom, and only gets worse as they get older, moderating sometimes when they have their own kids. I know parents often ask me to tell their child something that they don’t think the child will pay attention to from their own mom or dad. Though I am usually willing to give it a shot, I don’t find it that efficacious. A survey like this makes me wonder if parents aren’t selling themselves short.

This marked difference between the influence of parents versus rabbis, makes me wonder also about the influence of home versus synagogue and of community versus authority. Many forces conspire to bring Jewish activities from the home to the synagogue but this survey makes me wonder if we shouldn’t push back.

In earlier generations the mitzvah of teaching your children was understood to require direct action on the part of the parents. As a parent it was your obligation to teach your children, and though you were certainly allowed to send your child to school, (a system of Jewish community based schooling having been established 1800 years ago), even if you sent your child to school, you were still required to also teach them yourself. In many families throughout history this was accomplished by the father reviewing the week’s studies with his son on Saturday afternoon. This was more in depth than “what did you do in Sunday school” in the car ride home and probably had the benefit of some adult education as well. Children studied up for this session and fathers took the time to review in detail, asking questions and offering their own insights. In The Choosen, as you may recall, this became a weekly battle between Danny and his father Reb Saunders, as his father probed his brain and prepared him for succession. My impression from other stories and memoirs is that in most cases this was not such a high stakes enterprise, but something remembered with fondness for its love and sense of closeness. Our parent education programs in the Temple are meant to provide opportunities for parents to teach their children, but I am not sure we can really replace the teaching that might go on around the dinner table, sitting together on the coach, or while tucking a child into bed.

In earlier centuries, when the rabbis became concerned that people were not doing parts of the worship that were home rituals, they brought them into the synagogue. That is why the Orthodox added the morning blessings to the synagogue service centuries ago, and why several generations ago the Reform movement added a candle-lighting in Temple on Friday night. Again, I worry that something is lost in the transfer. Because so many prayers and rituals have moved to the synagogue, I think many Reform Jews are under the impression that we don’t pray at home. Bedtime prayers and morning prayers, a part of Jewish life from the time of the Mishnah, and still pretty common in the 20th century Reform Jewish community have almost disappeared. Table blessings are reserved for Shabbat or for meals eaten at the synagogue. Yet it is exactly this kind of observance that could meet our needs for everyday spirituality, for returning eating to a holy activity, and for the consecration of our homes as sacred spaces.

There are other ways as well that we have let the synagogue take over mitzvoth that were once done at home. Welcoming guests is something we often do today through the synagogue, as we hold Shabbat dinners for a variety of groups and occasions. This year Naomi Parker moved the membership committee back to more traditional hospitality in providing an invitation to a home for each new member family on the eve of this service. My impression is that this is a much warmer welcome to our congregation and a more meaningful form of hospitality.

Thinking about this survey also made me wonder about the influence of the community verses the experts, in this case your friends verses the rabbi. It is not just kids who are influenced by their peers. It is one thing for me to give a sermon on global warming and the moral hazards of SUV’s and something else for four of your friends to go out and buy hybrids. When one of our members chose to celebrate her birthday by taking her friends out for a day of volunteering, it probably did more to educate people to the needs of the community ( and was more fun) than sermons on the desperate needs of the working poor in our community. It is certainly more enticing to observe Shabbat, when with your friends you have organized a round of dinners and lunches, which you will all share in together. At the end of last year a group of adults who studied together in the parent education program requested that they have a class for this year as well. My guess is that the group bonding from that experience is more of an incentive to come to class than any snappy course description we could have created.

There is a final analogue to this survey, and that is our relationship to society as a whole. We all make an assumption that it is someone else who influences what happens in our world. Perhaps in being reminded that parents have more influence on their children than we might otherwise believe, we can also recognize that we have the potential for more influence on our society than we currently assume. Through PACT we are learning as a congregational Social Justice committee how to influence local governmental bodies. As a national reform movement we are able to muster the strength to be a player on important issues such as immigration Reform. The Jewish community as a whole has taken a leading role in the struggle against Genocide in Darfur .

As parents, as members of a congregation and community, and as citizens in a democratic society, it is what we do that matters.