Getting down to business

If you work in the Jewish community, you know that really, everything starts "after the holidays." Surprisingly, this year for me is no different. Sukkot is over, garbage cans are over-flowing with dried-out palm fronds and even lulovs, everyone is back from vacation and back to work!

Living

I think the time has come to marvel at the bus system here in Jerusalem. It is like a six day a week roller-coaster ride but without the seatbelts. You cannot say that busses here drive down the street. They hurtle!

And most mysteriously, there is no official bus map. If you go to tourist information or even to the bus company website, no map. You can put in a beginning station and an end station and the website will tell you which lines go that route. But if you know a general part of town and want to know which lines go there, you are on your own.

In response, there are several rogue bus maps that have sprung up, including on facebook, of all things. They say all this is because of the construction of a light rail system; the crazy construction changes the bus routes on a regular basis. Maybe...

Learning

This has been the focus of my week! Our classes formally began. We have a (4 1/2 hour) class on the philosophy of education (three hours of which is in Hebrew), one on art of observation, a reading group and a class on educational leadership. In addition to that, we get Hebrew tutoring once a week and we work on our individual projects.

Ill tell you a little about the educational leadership class. We began by thinking about what the world might be like if there was no need for education. (I would be interested in your thoughts on this!) From our answers, then, we were able to think about what the purpose of education should be. We discussed it among ourselves and then began reading various thinkers on the subject.

I wanted to share with you a particularly inspiring passage on the topic by Hannah Arendt:

"Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world."

This reminds me of the old Hillel rhetoric in which we moved away from the idea of "continuity" to embrace the concept of "renaissance" instead. I think this is a very important description of what Hillel work is all about: love, responsibility, renewal.

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