This is a talk I gave online to 3rd - 6th graders at CRC during covid when all our classes were on Zoom. All teachers were required to pick a week and give a teaching as part of our service. We were told the theme of the year was “what we learned during the pandemic.” Here's my teaching:
Hi everybody.
What have I learned from this pandemic year? I’ve learned that words can be tricky, so you have to take good care of them. Here’s what I mean:
When Torah study started happening on Zoom, I started going every Saturday morning.
And when I study Torah, I find new ways to think about things.
Well I found a really important lesson in the third portion of the year.
The name of the portion is Lech Lecha which means “go forth.” It is the story of Abraham feeling called to leave his home in Ur and to go forth with his whole family to a new home far away in Canaan.
When we were studying Lech Lecha, Rabbi Jim showed us a list of 13 ways our commentators have interpreted the words “go forth.” Two words, 13 different ways to think about them. Rabbi Jim even had a 14th possible way, and our Torah Study class had even more ideas of how we could think about those two words.
So I started thinking about words having different meanings for different people and how difficult just talking to each other can sometimes be.
More and more I’m noticing that I say words--and they come out of my mouth--and by the time they get to the person’s ears that I’m talking to, they mean a whole other thing than what they meant when I said them. I can tell by looking at the person and their response that they are puzzled or angry or hurt because they received a meaning I didn’t send.
It turns out that
People see things differently based on their own experiences like when I say I love dogs, a person might not understand my feeling if they had been bitten by a dog.
People hear things differently based on where they heard the comma. My friend Peggy told me that she once had a conversation with her 3rd grade son and said “We need to talk turkey.”
Her son thought she was saying “We need to talk, Turkey” and got mad because he thought she was calling him a turkey.
People might understand word meanings just a little differently. Like the little girl who was playing outside all day and when she came in, her mom said, “Wow you’re pretty dirty!” And she said, “Yes and I’m even prettier clean.”
People might hear the way you say words differently. Like when I first moved to St. Louis we were at a party and someone asked me if I needed a fark. I had to think a little before I figured out he meant a fork.
And what about words you don’t say like when I sometimes THINK I gave a particular piece of information and I really had forgotten to give it and it causes a problem.
The more I thought about it, the more complicated it got. So I gave myself a homework assignment. It has three parts.
Find more ways to make my words clear so they say exactly what I mean.
Since number one is really hard to do all the time, make sure I tune in to the people I am talking to to make sure they are understanding what I mean. That’s why the one really hard thing for me as a teacher this year is not being with you to see what your faces are telling me.
And if I am listening to someone speak, if I feel a little unsure or surprised or hurt about what they said, make sure I check it out and don’t just assume or make up some sort of meaning that could be totally wrong.
So if I ever have occasion to say to you “go forth,” please know that I mean go forward to some new wonderful adventure and that I don’t mean: go fourth--and not third or fifth.