Wednesday, September 28, 2016

September 28th: That's Debatable

If you had not watched the debate and exclusively looked at my Twitter feed, you would have thought that Hillary Clinton delivered the knockout punch to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Depending on what news source you choose to follow, you might find something very different.

In all reality, an objective viewer is likely to say very little changed from Monday to Tuesday. Clinton was exactly as prepared and calculated (perhaps overly so), and willing to expose Trump’s character flaws as we would have expected. Trump continued to be as brash and braggadocious (yes, it is, in fact, a word) as he has always been, marginalizing some and endearing to others. On the whole, voters got to see very little that they had not known hours before.


Perhaps a few Clinton supporters feel more confident in their candidate. Perhaps the political ideologues feel a little better knowing that their candidate will stick to certain statements and adhere to party lines. Perhaps even a few undecideds were able to come to terms with their voting reality. But, on the whole, it would be hard to say that Monday night moved the needle much at all in one direction or another.

The sad reality we face was displayed in the split-screen image that filled our TVs. We were able to see these two individuals next to one another, to compare their speech and their reactions. In this way, it was abundantly clear that we are comparing two dramatically different characters. One a career politician, taking up a role she has spent years training for, and another who continually proves himself to be impulsive and volatile. It is an embarrassment to our political system and a mockery to the ideologies that divide our nation.

Our country is deeply and troublingly divided on big conceptual issues and how to solve them. In an election year, we have the chance to discuss and debate, to hear from potential leaders and choose a future we can believe in. Unfortunately, we do not have two options of legitimate governmental direction. We created a situation in which a man with nothing but money and hot air has been selected as the leader of a party once known for its traditional adherence to values and history, now known as a circus. In a year where we so desperately need to discuss the political reality of our country, we find ourselves incapable of having a legitimate conversation.

A debate is only valid when two legitimate parties agree to discuss particular issues. While Clinton showed up to play ball, she opposed a man with no legitimacy to back himself up. What resulted was a sad version of two people engaging in very different discussions from one another. What should have served as a moment of high-level discussion and policy argumentation devolved into a mockery of a country in desperate need for change.

This election will show far too many people who are voting far more because they hate the other person, rather than that they feel strongly in support of their candidate. That is a sad reality, but one we have to come to terms with. As a result, Americans will have to continually fight for their voices to be heard. It won’t be enough to wait another 4 years until we can take another crack at this elections craziness. We must be willing to work hard to work with whichever of these two individuals find themselves in the oval office. Monday night made it abundantly clear that we have an awful lot of work to do.

Monday, September 26, 2016

September 26th: Gone Too Soon

The number “1992” bothered me profoundly. Learning of the death of a baseball star was incredibly sad. But the fact that this young man was born during the same year as I was terribly disturbing.

We went to bed on Saturday night at a time when baseball was exciting, full of promise and fun. Sunday morning muted that happiness, snuffing out the chase for the playoffs with the death of a beloved player, a cherished human being.

24-year-olds are not supposed to die. He was supposed to pitch today. He was supposed to be a perennial all-star, maybe even a Hall of Famer. He was supposed to share his talent with fans of the game for years to come. Instead, we are left with shock, with the devastating reality that his life has run it’s course.

I have never met Jose Fernandez. To me, he was a baseball player, a statistic, an asset to his ballclub. He was, in many ways a character in baseball’s drama. With the way we critique and judge our sports stars, it would be so easy to forget that he was a real person, a friend, a husband. Bringing his humanity to life only after his death feels somehow perverse, a failure to fully appreciate him enough while he provided us with entertainment and excitement.

As the baseball world begins to memorialize their fraternity brother, the joy he brought to the game was impossible to ignore. He had just enthusiasm for life, a way of bringing a smile to everything he did. He made it fun to watch him play baseball, and made it so abundantly clear that he loved to play the game.

To memorialize him yesterday, many clubs made Fernandez jerseys with his name and number 16 in their own colors. The Cubs were one of those teams, hanging a 16 Cubs Fernandez jersey. There had been discussions about Chicago looking into trading for him during the coming offseason, an idea that I, as a fan, had gotten excited about. I would have loved to have seen Fernandez’s name written in Cubby blue. I certainly didn’t want to see it like that.

May his memory be forever a blessing to all who knew him, all who loved him, and all who shared a love for his game.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

September 6th: Don't Be Afraid of Pokemon

Adults are terrified of Pokemon. Well, to be more specific, educators of young people are intimidated by Pokemon. As children begin their return to the classroom, teachers are forced to compete with telephones in a way that they can identify more clearly than ever: an augmented reality game that has captured the attention of youth better than most educators can.

Earlier this month, I spent time with two different communities of youth educators and advisors, and both times, Pokemon Go was a source of anxiety and intimidation. What chance does education have when the competition is a cell phone scavenger hunt with digital characters hidden all over the neighborhood? Even worse, what do you do when those Pokemon actually invade the walls of the classroom?


What became clear to me is that all too many teachers and educators are viewing these distractions and outside influences of children as competition, as some kind of external source that must be vanquished with even more engaging activities and educational models. If that is the case, I have a sad reality to share: school, most especially religious school, will never be able to compete with Pokemon Go.

You see, Religious School has a longstanding battle waging against the fun of the outside world. Whether it’s leaving Sunday school early to get to a soccer game or skipping Wednesday night Hebrew school in favor of marching band practice, the abundance of outside influences have been forcing young Jews to make a choice about their time. As of yet, almost no religious school model has been able to engage on a level that can compete with sports or other extracurricular activities. It requires a deep commitment and desire for learning to remain engaged in a religious school system, and, while many teens have that willingness to engage, many do not.

That is, of course, not to say that there aren’t excellent programs going on in religious institutions. Every year, Sunday schools get more and more innovative, trying to bring the information they hope to teach to life for their students.

What Pokemon Go has to teach us is that we can’t beat a game that encompasses real-life adventure with digital engagement. What we need to learn is that Pokemon Go is a language that we are positive our children will understand. We must use that as a tool to try to relay information in a way that is relatable, understandable, and meaningful in the eyes of a young person.

The same can be said for any of the multitude of distractors from religious education. We have to stop seeing soccer practice as a distraction from the work we are trying to do and we have to start seeing it as an opportunity to engage youth in a new way. Jewish communities should be building sports curricula into their religious school programs, to ensure that those students who find sports as their connection to something greater don’t have to leave the walls of the congregation to find what they are looking for. If music is their key to access, we should be providing creative outlets for expression. If our children are telling us that they are interested in something, it is our job to be creative enough to find a space for it within our community, rather than forcing them to make a choice.

If religious institutions can combine all of the facets of daily life into their communities, it will allow members and students the chance to feel as though the congregation is their headquarters for everything that they need in life. When we view Pokemon Go as an opportunity to relate to our students, rather than as a distraction from the information we are trying to impart, than we run the risk of ostracizing our young people and forcing them to choose between being learning and fun. In a perfect world, it is our job to ensure that we are able to do both.