By David "Hpot" Rosenberg
One thing about our educational process that I feel very strongly about deals with our relationship to those who have long since graduated from our movement. From the parsha, the Sanhedrin was made of various elders; individuals with much experience, wisdom and perspective. They were picked because they were deemed worthy of keeping the interest of the Jewish people and as having the capacity to guide each of the tribes. With the induction of these elders, there became a fuller bredth of information available to the Jewish People and thus could be used as resources by those with problems. In a similar vein, much of the time, I have notice that in terms of problem solving, we as a movement have a "face problems as they arrive" orientation. However, I feel that sometimes we lack foresight to address problems before they arise. I think a specific example of this is when dealing with kid issues that are very intense. We want to do everything that we can to help, even though we have never been trained for handling such issues. A solution to this that I see as being a possibility is that there are many individuals who have long since graduated from being movement members, but have received much education about topics and affairs that those of us with less life experience are not aware. I believe that if it is our mission to engage in Tikkun Olam to the fullest of our beings, and that education is one of the most powerful means to fulfilling that goal, we must continually challenge ourselves to look for more sources of trusted information and guidance and reach out to these "elders" from our community to help guide us. We are not isolated and cannot view ourselves as alone in the process of making the world a better place. To think that we can do it all by ourselves completely denies the fact that we are just members of larger communities and that our mission is to engage at all levels.
Yeah!