Through Jewish Eyes
By Jared Skoff - a dvar Torah in honor of the 50th anniversary of Tikvah and the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
A young girl is listening to her mother explain giving birth. She interjects, “Mom, that must really hurt.”
The mother nods.
The daughter pauses, then asks, “Does it hurt the mom too?”
Each of us steps into a story or experience carrying our own perspective and our own identity. When I lived in New York City, I could not help but see the world through Midwestern eyes. I spent the better part of 3 years noticing the absence of driveways and backyards, and wondering why strangers don’t say hi back when we pass on the street.
When I read Jewish texts, I cannot help but read them through Jewish eyes. During the story of the 10 plagues, when the Hebrews paint lamb’s blood on their doorposts as the first mezuzah, I immediately think about Passover, my experiences at the Seder, and my own mezuzah at the doorpost of my home. Through Christian eyes, this sacrificial lamb is a symbol of Jesus. This story has very different meanings for different readers.
But for a Jewish reader, we have a dual responsibility. To read through Jewish eyes as a member of an ethnic and religious group is to understand the implications of a story for the Jewish people. Yet, to read through Jewish eyes is also to see the implications of a story for all human beings, obligated by our Jewish tradition to affirm that each and every person is created “in the image of God.” It is easy to consider how the narrative relates to me, and much harder to consider and anticipate how the narrative relates to my neighbor.
So then how do we read our Bible stories about donkeys? Balaam’s talking donkey may be the most famous, but we have stories about donkeys throughout the Hebrew Bible in more minor roles. Rabbis Jonathan Magonet and Benay Lappe both discuss the phenomenon of “donkey stories” in the Torah. If a donkey could read the Torah, they argue, the donkey would notice all of the stories about donkeys that we are missing. Every time they would spot a donkey in the text, they would say “That’s me! There I am again!” Not only the stories about literal donkeys, Rabbi Lappe insists, but also the stories about someone carrying a burden placed on them unjustly. A donkey would read that story and say, “I know what that is like.”
“Donkey stories” are a good litmus test for reading through Jewish eyes. If I aspire to read the story through Jewish eyes, am I considering how it relates only to me?
This week we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Tikvah program and the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Both of these anniversaries mark milestones of access and opportunity for people with disabilities where it did not exist before, in our workplaces and in our Jewish communities. Tikvah is the Hebrew word for “hope.” It represents a yearning and a vision for a community that is more inclusive, more diverse, and more equitable than it is today. For the past 50 years and still today, Tikvah inspires us at Ramah camps and across the international Jewish community to question – are we approaching our relationships and our communities through Jewish eyes? How can we make our communities more welcoming, more accessible, and more ideal for each and every member to find their place?
Thanks to Tikvah’s visionary founders Herb and Barbara Greenberg and thanks to the dedicated directors and staff of our Tikvah programs, we are continuing to ask these important questions, and our programs continue to make an incredible impact on so many staff, campers, participants, and alumni. On Wednesday night, the National Ramah Tikvah Network hosted a panel in celebration of Tikvah’s 50th anniversary, and I want to close with three quotes from our panelists who so beautifully captured how the Tikvah program has inspired our community to “see with Jewish eyes.”
“Camp Ramah benefits from Tikvah because people learn that not everybody looks the same or learns the same, but it is all about learning acceptance.”
- Sam Busis, Tikvah Voc-Ed alum, Camp Ramah in New England
“Tikvah has taught our community members that what we have in common far outnumbers our differences. I have seen campers and staff transform into more caring individuals, more willing to embrace diversity, and more open to finding commonalities with people who are different from them.”
- Maya Albin, Tikvah Vocational Program Coordinator, Ramah Darom & National Ramah
“Ramah is becoming more and more inclusive. Every year or two we cross a new boundary toward more inclusion, and this progress depends on staff members who really “get it”, people who are open-minded and willing to take chances to push our program forward. I sometimes think the only limitations are the ones we have in our heads.”
- Ralph Schwartz, Director of Special Needs Programs, Camp Ramah in Wisconsin
Jared Skoff is Program Director, National Ramah Commission; Rosh Tikvah, Ramah Wisconsin; and a second-year rabbinical school student at the Ziegler School for Rabbinic Studies.