Burnt Out?
The pun works well for Chanukah, but does being burnt out work well for you?
The first semester is the longest of the academic year and in many ways the most challenging, as we get to know our new students and they get to know us.
Winter break is just around the corner and teachers and students across the country are counting down the days to having a lie in, hitting the Christmas sales and snuggling up in front of the TV with a hot chocolate.
My only advice to you, as Limmudei Kodesh teachers, is not to push the time!
Beware of allowing YOUR exhaustion and the restlessness of your students to compromise your teaching of Chanukah. Of all the holidays in the Jewish calendar, Chanukah is probably the most widely marked, even by the most assimilated Jews, who will happily kindle the Chanukah lights each night. What's more, children love Chanukah - it has no restrictions and all its customs are great fun!!
However, your weary 10th graders are not children. They have been taught the Chanukah story nine times already and are certain there's nothing new you could possibly add to it. How do you grab their attention?
A foolproof way of doing this is to make the story relevant to their lives. The Chanukah story dramatizes institutionalized anti-Semitism inflicted upon a Jewish minority by a gentile government. It illustrates the clashes of Jewish and secular culture and the attractions of assimilation. What's more, the Chanukah story illustrates amazingly the extent to which Judaism is regarded as an impressive force in the eyes of non-Jews. Why else would the formidable Syrian-Greek empire have set their armies on a few unarmed Jews? They certainly did not feel physically threatened by them. The ruling superpower felt ideologically intimidated by the Jews to the extent that they were prepared to mobilize their state of the art army to eradicate them.
Make your students think! The Chanukah story is a prototype for all anti-Semitism that was to follow. Did Anne Frank pose any physical threat to the German army? Obviously not. But she and 6 million others were deemed a serious threat and hunted down by the nazis like class A criminals. What is assimilation? Would your students date a non-Jew? How do your students feel about the secular culture that pervades every aspect of their lives?
For every light we kindle on Chanukah, there is a story of a comparable miracle, in which a Jewish community was saved by the hand of God. The miracle of Jewish survival is indeed an inspiring topic for any classroom.
Think inspired! Relight your fire!
