Posted By James Besser
Out of the Mouths of Babes.../ Rabbi Gerald Skolnik
When you have to deliver a sermon every week, in order to survive the unrelenting pressure of coming up with fresh, relevant and well-presented topics, you become a keen listener and observer. Ideas present themselves in the most unexpected places. The trick is to be open to hearing and seeing them.
When last I wrote, I was looking for a framework for addressing the recent summit in
This past Friday morning, I had the pleasure of being an invited guest to our wonderful Nursery School’s weekly Shabbat celebration. Every week, there is a Shabbat Abba and Ema (mother and father) for each class, and in addition to being guests in the class, they also attend the group celebration of Shabbat in our sanctuary. I can’t get there every week- Fridays are invariably frantic days, especially at this time of year when the days are so short- but our school’s director makes sure that, at the very least before holidays, I check in with the kids and talk to them a bit about what’s coming up in the Jewish calendar.
Since Chanukkah begins in just a few days, this Friday was the right time for a pre-holiday visit, and I was excited. In fact, I had decided that, after more than two years of guitar lessons, I was ready to play and sing with the children, something I had always dreamed of being able to do. I never saw myself- and still don’t- as the classic caricature of the guitar-playing rabbi whose guitar is part of everything he does. Too new-age for me, I must admit.
But particularly with very young children, it seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to use this new skill. So I reviewed a few Chanukkah songs, and went off to do my thing.
Because it was my first time playing for them, I explained that this was something new for me, and I hoped that it might teach them that even people like their parents, and older than their parents, are capable of learning new things. Simple enough, yes? Well, one of the guest families had brought along an older sibling- maybe seven or eight, I would guess- who immediately raised his hand and asked “Is this what they mean when they say that an old dog can learn new tricks?” The question made me feel just a little like a big old basset hound with droopy ears- not the feeling I was looking for, per se- but it was such a precious moment!
And then later, when I was back in my office, I started thinking…. Old dogs, new tricks. I’d always wondered how Jacob, who suffered so from his parents having played favorites with him and his brother Esau, could turn around and do something very similar with Joseph, with predictably disastrous results. Are learned behaviors necessarily destiny? Can you teach an old dog new tricks? And I thought further still… Are Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen (and, more importantly, the constituencies they represent) able to learn new ways to relate to each other, or are they too stuck in learned patterns of behavior, incapable of learning and teaching “new tricks?”
It was worth a few minutes of feeling like a basset hound.