The Torah on your IPod
Vision / Description: Inspiring Students to Build Connectedness Between all Parts of Their Identities, Using Popular Music and Jewish Texts and Values
Student Goals and Objectives
- Value students' experience and lives as jumping off point for Jewish learning
- Understand that everything in the world conveys an ethical perspective
- Empower critical thinking about values expressed in our culture
- Master resources through which one can glean Jewish ethical and text perspectives
- Build motivation to include Jewish perspectives as a part of critical thinking and personal decision making
Staff Goals and Objectives
- Understand cultures in which students live
- Respect the variety of identifications of our students¡¦ lives
- Build critical thinking skills and personal decision making of students
- Jewish ethics and values
- Biblical and rabbinic texts
- Jewish music
The Learning Experiences [customized for each session and series]
- Students' selection of popular music that they feel expresses certain values
- Selection of Hebrew / Israeli music that expresses certain values
- Listening to musical selections and reading lyrics to identify values
- Presentation of print and online resources for Jewish values and Jewish texts
- Small group activity for students to identify Jewish values and texts that relate to values expressed in song lyrics
- Analysis of similarities and differences between songs and Jewish values
- Follow up : Long distance coaching of teachers in using students' lives as a starting point in Jewish teaching
Evaluation
- Formal evaluations through written tools and discussion
- Critical Friends (among staff or students)
- Blog / VLog to share experiences
- Staff Observations
Recommended Opportunities
- Family, Parent and Adult Education
- High School & Middle School Classes
- Staff Orientation and Professional Learning
- Jewish Connectivity in Residence weekend
A Success Story
High school students in a course signed up to bring popular songs from their music collection that they felt might have ethical values (including messages that might oppose Jewish values). Each week, two songs were played, lyrics distributed, selections from the lyrics were identified as having ethical messages, and those messages were compared and contrasted to Jewish values and ethics. In one particularly powerful experience, a student brought in the song How to Save a Life. Students learned that the songwriter had worked as a counselor in a camp for troubled teens and that one camper had committed suicide when he worked there. The discussion quickly went to the recent suicide of a fellow student in the high school many of the teens attended. The Jewish value of Pikuach Nefesh, saving a life, was introduced. This class session ended with a discussion of the responsibility that each person has for another.