No Shortcuts: Raising Kids with a Sense of Justice

By JILL SUZANNE JACOBS

As a child, I would sit with my brothers on the living room floor with one, five, and ten-dollar bills piled up around us. By our parents' feet was a stack of solicitations, newsletters, and remittance slips. One by one my father would explain each organization. My two younger brothers and I would deliberate and then decide how much money from our individual stack we each wanted to give.

"Every interaction is a possible teaching moment, from the homeless guys on the street, to the elderly man we helped by calling an ambulance when he appeared to be having a heart attack, to the guy who asked for money as I entered the supermarket," says the father of four. "I bought him two bananas on the way out. I think parents need to model their behavior in everything they do. Even when you speak to people such as teachers, household help and each other, you are modeling chesed [kindness]."

Everyday Acts

Teaching children justice and compassion through everyday acts is a common thread between families from the urban environment of Manhattan to the rural hills of Oregon. Whatever their styles of observance or brands of activism, the twin commitments of Judaism and social action form the basis of their everyday life. Many of the parents interviewed for this article have devoted their professional lives to socially conscious causes. But when it came to passing these values onto their children, they found themselves teaching the most during the everyday bustle of family life.

For Judy Visser and her husband Johan, who raised their two children in rural southern Oregon, teaching their children social justice was a process that happened "quietly and everyday." Their son, Jesse, now a senior a Harvard, has volunteered as an elementary school tutor during all four years, and regularly delivers leftover food from the dormitory to a homeless shelter. This past Chanukah, he donated a sum of money in his parents' honor to support families and reduce child labor in India, where he volunteered for a month this past summer. Their daughter Sarah, who is sending off her college applications to a smattering of schools dotting the West Coast and the eastern seaboard, signs American Sign Language and is an actor in two community theatre troupes which deal with issues like discrimination against gay and lesbian teens and teen pregnancy.

"We teach our values through trying to live our lives consciously," Visser says, "through discussing, questioning and arguing, and by making ritual meaningful, relevant, and alive." The family belongs to a Conservative congregation, regularly has Shabbat celebrations at home, and integrates Jewish ritual into their family life along with their activist commitments.

Involving Kids

The Visser family made a point of involving their children in social issues in ways that they could understand. When an incident of racial violence occurred in their community, Judy baked a pie with her children, and together they brought it over to the victim's house and left it on his doorstep. "That was something they could understand," she says. "[They understood that] this is a nice way to treat someone."

For Visser, social conscience is largely about treating others kindly and fairly, and taking action when people are not being treated with respect. From a young age, the children went to rallies and demonstrations with their parents, and participated alongside their parents in various civic projects. When an anti-gay referendum appeared on the Oregon ballot, the Visser family went to a protest where they met a lesbian couple who lived in their neighborhood. "They were in tears in their eyes when they saw us, and they told us they felt safe in our neighborhood," Visser remembers. "That put a face on the issue, rather than it being an abstraction."

"Mitzvah Headquarters"

"Putting a face" on issues, and bringing social action right into their home, is something on which the Butler family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvia prides itself. On any given Friday night, different members of their community circle their Shabbat dinner table, and sometimes the headcount creeps up to 40. Residents of a nearby Jewish group home for adults with mental illness are frequent guests, as are the elderly, single-parent families, and college students in need of a home-cooked meal. "It is always a meaningful affair," says Nina Butler, who along with her husband Dan, are the parents of five children aged 13 through 21, three of whom have special needs.

For the Butler family, words are not enough, nor is it sufficient to simply give money to worthy causes. "In America it is very easy to put a price tag on values, and I just don't believe you can put a price tag on actions and activities," she says. "Giving money to a cause isn't as potent or meaningful to children as actively being involved in the causeŠModeling is more important than any speech a parent could give," insists Butler.

Their home serves as a sort of "mitzvah headquarters", where good deeds are done, values and passions are discussed, and plans are hatched. The older Butler children also go door-to-door encouraging people to vote. "Jewish kids getting people to vote is a Jewish thing," Butler says. "I'm really proud to have my kid with a kippah [on his head] getting people to vote. It's Kiddush HaShem [sanctification of God's name and bringing honor to Judaism]."

Just Giving

Rabbi Marc Gopin, an Orthodox-ordained rabbi who serves a pluralistic congregation in Cambridge, Temple Beth Shalom, has two daughters ages three and six months, yet Gopin believes it is not too early even at this age to instill habits of the heart. "We tell our three-year-old daughter that the Torah wants her to treat people kindly, and wants us to be forgiving," he said.

Imbuing his daughters with a social conscience is a process that Rabbi Gopin, and his wife Robin, an attorney, began almost at the time of their birth. "Tzedakah was part of our Simchat Bat [a ceremony welcoming Jewish baby girls into the covenant], part of our formal commitment, he said. "We gave each daughter a tzedakah box. Eventually we will go with them to places where the tzedakah is put to use."

Gopin is careful to point out that the proper translation of tzedakah is "justice", and it is this value he hopes to instill in his children, rather than just the act of giving money itself. "According to the Talmud, even more sacred than collecting funds for tzedekah, is the act of teaching children about justice and compassion," he says.

Social action is a mirror of these families' spiritual commitments. By acting on these commitments as a family, they teach and inspire their children, putting into action the values they hold most dear. In their parenting, they are living examples of the teaching of the prophet Micah:

"God has told you what is good, and what God demands of you: Only to do justice, love hesed [lovingkindness], and walk humbly with your God."