"Bling Bling", Barbies, And Teaching Hashkafah

Earlier this month, I wrote about my problems with the gifts my 7 year old daughter received at her birthday party and the general issue of teaching hashkafah and a sense of Jewish values to one's child.

I made my move the other day to try to address the issue with my daughter.

I had saved the box that my daughter's "Bling Bling" Barbie had come in, and Monday night I took it out and sat down with my daughter. I reminded her that I had told her then that I did not like the doll. I asked her if she knew why, and she pointed at the picture on the box and said that the Barbie doll was not modestly dressed, and had a lot of jewelry on. I talked to her about the idea of being Tzenuah--modest--and not being ostentatious. She seemed to really understand. I showed her how on the box it talked about the Barbie doll representing a "new lifestyle" and that this is not our lifestyle .

My daughter nodded in understanding.

She then proceeded to point to a picture of a new series of Barbie dolls that are now available that are shown on the box and told me that she wanted one because her friend had one. She didn't skip a beat--she went from complete understanding of and agreement with the idea of being modest, to asking for a half-naked doll that completely contradicted everything we had just been talking about.

I had a similar experience years ago when I was teaching Chumash to a 7th grade class.

One day a girl in my class mentioned that on the soap opera "Days of Our Lives", one of the characters--a religious Jewish woman--had a non-Jewish boyfriend. My student saw nothing wrong with this.

That day, we discussed the soap opera in class.

We discussed the issue of intermarriage. We discussed it from the viewpoint of Halachah and the implications for the survival of Jews, Jewry, and Judaism. We discussed whether it makes a difference if the couple is in love. We discussed if it made a difference if the non-Jewish partner converts and whether such a conversion was sincere and acceptable according to Jewish Law.

Then I took a poll by secret ballot.

In the first part of the poll, I asked whether it was OK for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. I asked if it made a difference if they were "truly in love", if the non-Jewish partner would convert etc. The vast majority of the class said that intermarriage was wrong.

In the second half of the poll, I asked them whether they thought the character in the soap opera should marry the non-Jew. The majority said yes.

After having said in class that even if the non-Jewish partner would convert it would likely not be sincere, after having voted in the poll that conversion should not make a difference--those same students said that in the case of the soap opera it was real love and the non-Jew would probably convert and he would surely mean it.

No matter what they thought in theory, when it came to characters in a soap opera that they could identify with, the rules of the game changed. Remember--these were characters in a soap opera, not real people; yet because they identified with them, all the discussions and reasons went out the window. For many, all the arguments we had discussed in class against intermarriage amounted to nothing more than an idea, a theory, that was coherent and logical, but not applicable to a real flesh and blood situation in life.

I was shocked.

This is the problem I am having right now with my daughter. She understands what I tell her about being Tzenuah--the same way that she understands that if 1+9=10 then 9+1=10. But it is only a piece of information that exists in the world and makes sense, but it is not something that affects her life, her interests.

At least not yet.
But there is time.

After the poll, I kidded the girl who had mentioned this plot line in "Days Of Our Lives" in the first place that the characters in the soap opera would probably not get married anyway, and that if they did, there marriage would not work out. She bet me that they would get married and live happily ever after.

Neither of us took into account the fact that this was, after all, a soap opera.

In the soap opera plot, the girl died.

Technorati Tag: Judaism and Hashkafa and Hashkafah.

Remember: It's Hashkafah, Not Hushkafah

After writing My Daughter's Birthday Party Gifts and The Revenge of the Birthday Gift, I've been thinking about the question of the kind of Hashkafah (Jewish worldview) we give our children.

A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking to a parent who was considering sending their child to another school. The school under consideration was superior in English studies and likely in Hebrew studies as well. When I mentioned that their child's current school was probably stronger in terms of giving over a frum Jewish Hashkafah, the response was that that was something that could be dealt with later.

That answer left me dissatisfied. One of the reasons for switching out of the current school was the rote memorizing of facts and information--in Parshat HaShavuah and Chumash--facts that seemed to be completely forgotten later. That struck a chord in me because that was one of the reasons I decided to speak to my daughter only in Hebrew: I want Hebrew to be a living language to her--not just a collection of vocabulary words for learning a text.

But doesn't that same approach to Hebrew apply to Hashkafah too? Shouldn't Hashkafah be an integrated part of our children and not just a bunch of memorized rules? Shouldn't it be something that the children understand and are aware of and can articulate?

A few years ago, I was discussing with a Rav in town the topic of Hashkafah. I said that I thought that unlike other communities with a particular Hashkafah--such as Teaneck (YU / Torah U'Maddah) or Breuer's (Torah Im Derech Eretz), the Jewish community in our town did not really have one. He seemed a bit insulted and told me that the Jewish community in town had its own particular Hashkafah, but one that was sophisticated and difficult to describe. To me, if the Hashkafah was so hush-hush and could not be articulated on some level by the members of the community, it did not really exist.

A few days ago my daughter told me that the mother of one of her friends would not allow her daughter to chew gum--because it was not Zenuah (modest). I recalled years ago Nechamah Leibowitz ridiculing the whole idea of chewing gum and told my daughter what I had heard from Nechamah. Later, it turned out that actually what the mother had forbidden to her daughter was having her nails done. I talked to my daughter about that too.

Today, I tackled the Bratz doll and the Bling Bling Barbie. I talked to her that the way those dolls dressed and were made up were not the way we do. I talked to her that we do not wear showy clothes and jewelry and that we are more modest. I talked to her in English and threw in the word 'ostentatious' for good measure to give it a name that I could refer to later.

My daughter's response was to ask why Elmo is naked.

It's going to be a tough road, but I'm glad I made a start.

Technorati Tag: Judaism and Hashkafa and Hashkafah.