Teaching Truth: How I Got Fired From Teaching Teens at a Jewish Sunday School

Teaching Truth How I Got Fired From Teaching Teens at a Jewish Sunday School

This week I was abruptly fired from my job teaching teens in a Jewish Sunday School (at a congregation with a proud history of participation in the Civil Rights movement) for showing a video on censorship related to Palestine by a Palestinian comedian. I offered the lesson in the context of a curriculum on Jewish ethics as part of an exploration of the topic of “truth.” The exercise for the students was to listen to a point of view that might be challenging to hear and to practice sitting with that person's truth as well as their own. My teen students immediately recognized the value of the exercise and received the video well, responding with laughter and thoughtful reflections. Unfortunately, some of their parents (who happened to be my supervisors) did not. Within 24 hours I was unequivocally informed that I had lost my job.

As I am processing strong feelings of grief, anger, and hurt, I want to share what happened, and do so as honestly as I can. I am moved to speak my truth and take action out of love for all of the people involved in this situation, and especially on behalf of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who are being killed as I write this. I wish no harm upon anyone. I want to embody peace toward all people in this moment, and I am writing with the goal of practicing peace.

For me, the story begins in the summer of 2017, when my new supervisor at Lev Learning, the religious school at Makom Solel-Lakeside in Highland Park, IL, first gave me a copy of Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar by Alan Morinis, a book that would radically shape my life from that point on. The book introduced me to Mussar, a philosophical tradition of Jewish ethics that formed the basis of a historic movement in 19th century Lithuania, until the rich schools of thought and practice it engendered were almost entirely wiped out in the Holocaust. Now, a new, modern revival of the movement is underway, in which people from a wide range of Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds are practicing Mussar. In Everyday Holiness, Morinis offers a practical methodology for creating a self-directed spiritual discipline using Jewish tools and concepts for living an ethical life and improving oneself in an ongoing, systematic way. Recognizing that the book was not just meant to be read, but to be applied, I immediately put it into use and have maintained an ever-deepening Mussar practice since.

With encouragement and support from my supervisor, I increasingly integrated Mussar frameworks into my approach to faith-based education with middle and high school students at both of my religious teaching jobs (first at Makom Solel-Lakeside and then at the interfaith Family School in Chicago, where I teach 8th graders). I have found that Mussar integrates easily into a critical pedagogy framework of teaching for liberation, which is how I approach my educational work. Indeed, the purpose of Mussar has always been traditionally understood to be not just individual transformation, but, through the process of bettering ourselves, to make a better world. Through regular self-reflection, we can identify ways in which our own struggles to live ethical lives reflect larger collective struggles to build an ethical society, and we can learn to bring greater conscious awareness and attention to where our own self-development meets the work of tikkun olam (repairing the world). The concepts and methods of Mussar are also meant to be applied intentionally for specific individuals and groups in specific times and places, not mechanically presented as abstract truths or timeless exercises. In these ways, I have found that Mussar itself inherently contains an authentic Jewish critical pedagogical tradition, something I consider to be among the greatest treasures of our inheritance as Jewish people.

As two years of teaching at the school went by, my new boss became my friend. Schedule changes at the school prevented me from continuing to work there for a few years, but then, last summer, my friend/former boss and I happened to run into each other at a show in which our mutual friend (who also teaches at the school) was performing. We connected in the lobby, both of us eager to talk, mostly about Mussar, and with great enthusiasm. We sat next to each other during the show and connected further afterwards. She told me that she might soon be looking for a teacher for a new iteration of the school's teen program, which would meet on Sundays. I told her I would be interested in coming back. It felt like a bashert reconnection to both of us – right on time.

At the beginning of this school year, we worked together to create a Mussar-inspired set of monthly values to implement across the whole school. For my position as instructor of the newly-revived teen program (with students ranging from 8th to 10th grade), I created an in-depth Mussar curriculum breaking the calendar into weekly prompts in a workbook to be distributed to the students, and this curriculum formed the basis not only for Mussar-inspired exercises and reflections, but for regular explorations of ethics in our daily lives, Jewish holidays, social justice issues, and more.

The congregation has a proud history of participation in the Civil Rights movement, and in social justice struggles broadly, and part of why my boss had hired me was because she thought my work fit in well with that part of the school's identity and mission. It was also because this is a difficult job in the sense that the older students are generally not very interested in religion and can be hard to engage and retain in the program. I appreciated her trust and felt committed to bringing my full attention, philosophical integrity, and skillset to the job.

Following October 7th, I knew that carrying on my work at Lev Learning would be an extremely difficult and sensitive endeavor, as several families in our congregation and school community, including my supervisor’s, mourned the loss of friends or relatives killed in Israel on that day, while some waited in horror for updates about people in their communities who had been among the hundreds taken hostage. For many Jews, still shaken from the unresolved historical trauma of the Holocaust, which gets re-triggered with every incident of rising right-wing antisemitism, this moment in history has activated deep, existential terror and real fears of the threat of elimination as a people. 

I carried on my work in coordination with school-wide guidelines and trauma-informed practices to help the students navigate the shock and horror of the unfolding events in a safe community space. I was encouraged and genuinely moved by my supervisor’s initial school-wide email, in which she used our value of the month, “awareness,” to frame these powerful words to our community on October 13th:

Our tradition teaches the value of eilu v'eilu, "both these and these," reminding us that we can hold multiple truths at one time. We can disagree with the Israeli government and love the Israeli people. We can despise terrorism and also grieve for the destruction in Gaza. We can feel anger so deeply that we barely recognize ourselves, and we can also return to love, remembering that the Divine spark within each one of us continues to burn brightly. It is only in holding space for one another, in meeting each other in our pain, that we can begin to heal the fragmented heart. May we stay aware, may we remember the beautiful innocent lives lost this week, and may we continue to work for an abundant, enduring peace, far away as it may seem.

And, while nothing could have prepared me for those first few days or weeks (or anything since then), I knew from working with teens for over 12 years how to hold space for students to share their views and opinions without introducing my own, even as I was troubled by the lack of understanding or empathy for Palestinians I perceived in the school environment as a whole. I carried on my lessons, guided by my best judgment of how our Mussar curriculum could be applied to themes and tensions in the students' everyday lives, as individuals and as members of our Jewish community.

Later in October, amid widespread fears of rising antisemitism, and as our middah (or value) of the month was still “awareness,” I taught a lesson on the history of antisemitism using Aurora Levins Morales' useful framework for understanding the specific, persistent function of anti-Jewish propaganda in maintaining ruling class power. I wanted to help equip the students with a historical understanding of what antisemitism is so that they could better navigate the escalating political climate and the reports of rising antisemitism around the country and world, while drawing their own conclusions about claims of antisemitism leveraged against critics of the Israeli government. The students, who, as far as I could tell, are not often given opportunities to dive deeply into concepts around economic class, were able to not only grasp the challenging ideas I was presenting, but also to bring in their own knowledge, connections, and responses as they engaged with the lesson.

After class, I ran into my boss in the hall. Even though she did not require me to report on my lessons before or after my class sessions, I wanted to let her know what I had talked about with the students (in part because her son was in my class, and I knew it had been a heavy load of thought-provoking and challenging content, so I wanted to give her a sense of what we had covered). It was also my way of checking in with her in person for the first time since 10/7.

We both knew that we held very different personal positions on the issue of Israel and Palestine, as well as vastly different professional positions within the wider social context. I am one of two cantorial soloists on staff at Tzedek Chicago, an openly anti-zionist Jewish congregation founded on core values of justice, equity, and solidarity. She directs a religious school at a congregation that, like so many Jewish institutions in the U.S., celebrates support for Israel as a central part of Jewish life.

During that conversation, my boss took the opportunity to draw a couple clear boundaries with me for my teaching and discussing topics related to Israel and Palestine at Lev Learning: 1) I was not to indicate or suggest to the students that Israel's attacks on Gaza constituted genocide, and 2) I was not to compare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general to European colonization in the Americas or elsewhere in the world. I acknowledged and agreed to these boundaries. Though I personally believed these policies to be misguided and harmful, I hoped I could still do more good than harm within my role in this community as an educator. I also understood that, while I had only agreed to two explicit boundaries, those boundaries implied and hinted at a wide range of others, and that I would have to find ways of pushing against these implicit boundaries in order to stay within my integrity.

Over the next excruciating three months, I accepted that, at least within this institution, the scope of my work to teach young people how to think critically about the unfolding situation in Gaza and the rapidly changing world around them was very limited. But that didn't stop me from digging into our Mussar curriculum with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, all the while constantly compartmentalizing my emotions and swallowing my dismay over the normative culture of silence that characterized the environment these young people had to learn in, a toxic culture in which Israeli militarism is widely celebrated and any serious discussion of the human rights of Palestinians is implicitly off limits. Every week I removed my kufiyeh and pins from my body and backpack in my car before entering the school. As our class time started with a lunch break at which pizza was served, I never mentioned to anyone that I was fasting on Sundays as part of the Jewish Fast for Gaza. I quietly co-facilitated my class' participation in school-wide activities like writing letters of support to Israeli armed forces. I kept my mouth shut during a guest presentation from a former IDF soldier. Meanwhile, I kept checking in with my students week after week about their personal goals and progress as we worked to cultivate values assigned to each passing month: awareness (October), gratitude (November), courage (December), and awe (January). Over time, I noticed a marked growth in their maturity and capacity for sustained serious and honest conversation on a wide range of topics, personal and political. We sometimes oscillated between silliness and seriousness, but over time they showed me through their actions that they wanted to help create a culture where we could discuss real world topics honestly, even when it was challenging. They appreciated the trust I placed in them, and over time I earned more and more of their trust in return.

Then, on January 28th (two days after the provisional ICJ ruling finding plausible evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza), after a discussion and exercise in yirah (awe/fear of God), I offered my students some choices for how to use the last 20 minutes of our class time. Because we were about to begin a month of exploring emet or “truth,” I offered to share with them a Palestinian voice as an exercise in facing someone else's truth when it might be challenging to their own, and helping them to develop their capacity for holding complex truth. They readily accepted the challenge. I offered to show them a visual artist currently creating work in Gaza amidst the destruction or to listen to a Palestinian comedian talk about censorship around Palestine and Israel. Unsurprisingly, they chose the comedian, noting that the message might go down easier (a rationale that I found both wise and fittingly Jewish).

I shared with them this 9-minute YouTube video by Sammy Obeid, titled “Comedian on Palestinian Censorship.” I had reviewed several of Sammy Obeid's videos in preparation for this exercise and had specifically chosen this one for many reasons. Overall, I determined it to be the only video by the comedian that was fully appropriate for the context (despite the fact that the curse words are not bleeped out in this one, whereas in other videos they are). Most people I know who have seen this video have found it to be quite nuanced and empathetic, especially in its explicit defense of the basic moral decency of the majority of Jews who identify with Zionism. And, while many other Sammy Obeid videos would have clearly violated the boundaries I had agreed to, I concluded that this one was within the bounds I had promised to keep (though of course I knew I might be risking my job anyway).

In the video, Obeid explains why is he actively calling for a ceasefire (“because I suffer from this condition called empathy”) as well as the return of all hostages (both “the Israeli hostages” and “the thousands of Palestinian hostages”), and then pivots to discussing the controversy and censorship of the phrase “from the river to the sea.” He spends most of the video making a case for why this phrase should be understood and discussed with nuance and empathy, acknowledging that it has been used by both Palestinians calling for the dissolution of Israel as well as by Israelis calling for the dissolution of Palestine (here he references the original 1977 Likud manifesto that formed the ideological platform of the right-wing party). He argues that just as most Jews who identify with Zionism don’t want to actively harm Palestinians, but just want sovereignty and freedom, so most Palestinians who use the phrase “from the river to the sea” don’t want to actively harm Israelis, but also just want sovereignty and freedom. 

While I knew that the video would be full of triggering words and ideas, I also knew that it was nothing the students couldn't handle. In fact, I was sure they would appreciate it and find it funny, which they did. They laughed throughout, and then shared insightful reflections. They appreciated the comedian's intelligence and nuanced takes on the topics he discussed. They commented on the clarity they gained through listening to his explanations of these complex issues. They remarked on how difficult it can be to discern truths in a world where so much of our media is so often one-sided, biased, and designed not to inform but to manipulate us. The truth is, the students didn't need much context from me to appreciate this video. They understood why I was showing it to them. They could feel that I was authentically engaging them in an honest discussion of the concept of “truth” in their lives. They seemed grateful for the experience.

Later that day, I received a call from my boss. She was angry. She had heard about the video first from her colleague, another supervisor of mine whose child was also in my class. He had watched the video and expressed concern to her about it. At this point she had actually only watched the first 10 seconds of the video and was already deeply upset, feeling that I had betrayed her trust (because, in the first 10 seconds, Obeid refers to the name “Palestine” as “the colonial name”). She asked me for an explanation as to how I could possibly have felt that this content was appropriate in the context of the curriculum I was teaching. Without overtly saying so, she made it clear to me that my job was on the line. She asked me for my opinion on whether she should even watch the rest of the video, or whether doing so would likely confirm her thinking that I was not a good fit for the school.

I gave her an honest, earnest, and thorough defense of my choice to introduce the video within the context of the curriculum. I explained how I had offered the students an authentic Mussar experience, giving them an exercise in contemplating the nature of truth by exposing them to a perspective that I knew they would not be likely to encounter otherwise, and how they had accepted the challenge and appreciated the experience. We talked for half an hour as I walked her through my logic in concluding that the video and lesson a) fell within the boundaries I had agreed to, b) demonstrated my approach to teaching critical thinking, and c) engaged the students in an urgent conversation about the value of truth in our Jewish community and broader society that they deserve to be brought into.

She countered that there was no need to bring up Israel and Palestine in talking about truth, or to risk pushing the boundaries to which I had agreed. She told me that she had taught Mussar for over a decade without ever bringing up the subject of Israel and Palestine. I told her that I couldn't ignore the obvious themes in the students' lives in my approach to Mussar, and specifically that I couldn't authentically talk about truth with the students in this moment while ignoring “the big lies” that are at the root of anti-Palestinian racism, which is so common in the world that these young people live in.

If I'm being honest, I wasn't my most eloquent on the phone with my boss. I did my best to offer what words I could, but I could hardly summon the energy for it. I could tell that this was most likely not going to work out. But even though I could sense that the chances of keeping my job were low, and even though I could have been more prepared for that conversation, I actually felt that the call went relatively well. We ended on a hopeful note for finding workable compromises to allow us to move forward together on a professional level, reaffirming our basic trust and mutual respect for each other as educators. I didn’t apologize for showing the video or giving the lesson I gave. And, even though I knew it might be the “nail in the coffin” for my job, I encouraged her to watch the rest of the video.

The next day, she called me back to let me know that I was no longer working at the school, effective immediately. She told me she had sought feedback from the synagogue's executive director, who had also watched the video. I asked if she had sought any feedback from the students in my teen program in making this decision. She said that she had, but hadn't received any meaningful input from them. She also said that sometimes adults have to make decisions for children in order to protect them, and that she didn't feel safe with me teaching the program anymore.

I was heartbroken. Not just for losing my only teaching job at a Jewish school, and not just for losing the connection to my students, but also for losing a friend. Of all the ironies in the situation, perhaps the most painful one for me personally is that it was my honest pursuit of Mussar itself, the spiritual path that she had introduced me to, which had now brought us to this point of a breakdown of trust in our relationship.

The most obvious irony is that I was censored for sharing a Palestinian voice talking about the censorship of Palestinian voices. I am certain this lesson will not be lost on the teens who were there. And of course, the real injustice here is not against me, but against them. They are the ones who are being hindered from having honest conversations about their own world. Who in this situation is really being protected, and from what? And how many students, teachers, parents, and other community members are not speaking about the compassion they feel for the slaughtered Palestinian lives for fear of retaliation? 

The most horrible irony is that this culture of silence is what allows the ongoing genocide in Gaza to continue every day in the name of preventing genocide. Until we as a Jewish community face this difficult truth, we will continue to reenact our historical trauma without integrating the real lessons our ancestors are begging us to learn.

Of course, this culture of silence goes well beyond the Jewish community, and my story is only a small example of the ongoing epidemic of censorship, thought policing, retaliation, and attacks on critical education in our times on a wide range of topics from Palestine specifically and colonialism in general to race, gender, climate, history, and more. 

Ultimately, history teaches us that you can never permanently prevent people from teaching or learning the truth, and Jewish tradition agrees. We are a people who teach our youngest children to ask questions around the passover table every year as we go through the ritual of retelling the ancient story of our liberation. This is our sacred responsibility: to teach our children to ask questions. This is how we pass on our stories in a way that allows the next generation to make those stories their own. And in this way, tradition stays alive. 

My prayer for my Jewish community is that we may let our hearts be broken wide open in this moment, enough to hear the voices of our ancestors as well as our children and future generations calling us to pay attention to what is happening in Gaza right now in the name of our safety. May we recognize that the idea that our own safety must come at the expense of others' safety is a dangerous lie, and stop telling it to ourselves and our children. And may we let ourselves see the truth that meaningful safety has always come from aligning ourselves with the pursuit of justice for all, from which flows lasting peace. May we honor our ancestors and heal our generational traumas by crossing the artificial borders that have been placed around us and joining in the calls from around the world for an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an end to the genocide of Palestinians.

As Jews, our very name “Hebrews” reminds us that we are boundary-crossers. Our biblical ancestor Jacob wrestled in his life and in his dreams, and the blessing he received was a new name, Yisrael, God-Wrestler. Like him, we are continually called to struggle with divine and human realities, facing changes as they emerge and shaping the outcomes with intention. Like our prophet Moses turning to look into the burning bush, we are called to hear the voice of the divine calling us to our part in a great story of redemption, as difficult as it may be to hear or to accept. Our tradition instructs us to remind ourselves to listen and to pay attention to that voice every morning when we rise and every night before we go to sleep as we say the Shema: “Hear, O Israel…”, “Listen, O God-Wrestlers…” Our central story of liberation, our millennia of experience surviving in the diaspora through solidarity with others, and our most holy name for God (which cannot be pronounced but suggests a poetic meaning like “becoming”) all remind us that our very existence continually moves us to seek liberation from narrow places, like water flowing, as it freely does, from the river to the sea.