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The Joy of Judaism
BY RABBI MENDY DEITSCH
WHEN WE WERE young, my
mother invited her OB-GYN
to join us for a Friday night
Shabbos meal. He was a fine
doctor and a proud Jew — a
survivor of the Holocaust.

He was thrilled to help bring
children into this world.

During the meal he asked
us kids if we knew about the
Holocaust. We did. He then
asked my brother and I the
names of the concentration
camps, and we were only able
to name two or three.

He was not happy.

He asked how my parents
could bring up their children —
I was 9 at the time — without
a thorough knowledge of what
had happened just a short 50
years earlier? My father simply
smiled and shared how beautiful
it was that we were learning in
the yeshiva, studying Talmud
and Jewish law, and sitting here
celebrating Shabbos, openly,
freely, joyously.

The doctor was not
impressed, to say the least.

I have replayed this partic-
ular Shabbos meal in my mind
many times over the years. I
began to wonder why I don’t
know more about this most
horrific atrocity that befell my
people, my family, just a few
years earlier.

As I got older I understood
that I actually know very much
about the torture, hunger,
suffering, killings and murder
at the hands of the Nazis, may
their name be obliterated. In
fact, many of my neighbors,
shopkeepers and the people I
sat next to in synagogue had
numbers on their arms and
spoke to us about what they
went through and the families
they had lost.

Yet, the focus of our educa-
tion was not on what the world
likes to show or teach about
Jews, mainly dead Jews and the
persecuted, but rather on the
living, breathing, vibrancy of
Judaism. My parents worked hard to
instill in us children the joy
of Judaism — the heroism, the
bravery, the eternity and the
growth of the Jewish people —
which is why we were sitting at
a Shabbos table with 30 guests.

My father brought us to the
Lubavitcher Rebbe to hear his
talks and to be in his presence.

The rebbe is upbeat, motivating
and uplifting.

The rebbe, who survived the
war, was alive. The rebbe had
joy and, at times, the central
shul where the rebbe prayed
was electrifying. It was filled
with forward motion, with
a vision toward a stronger,
rebuilt Jewish nation.

There were the lessons of
the past, yet, the focus was on
the future.

Our eyes were trained not to
look backward but to share the
vision for the future and the
potential of the Jewish people.

Over the years, I have
come to appreciate this way
of thinking much more. Not
because what happened in the
past is not important to learn
from, but it is precisely because
of the past and what we went
through as a people that the
need to reach out, uplift and
be present for each brother and
sister is essential to a thriving
Jewish people.

It is not enough to be a
proud Jew. That leaves the next
generation, unfortunately,
marrying outside the religion
and essentially ending the
Jewish line of his/her family.

We need to live an inspired
life, a happy life, to teach and
inspire those of the religion to be
an active Jew, a mitzvah-fulfilling
and proud Jewish person. This
will keep us alive and thriving
for a more meaningful life as
individuals and as a people.

It is time we embrace the
happiness of Judaism, the
positive lessons and the amazing
opportunity that G-d gives us
to connect to Him, to have a
relationship with Him. How
fortunate we are to be living in
this generation where, through
our actions, we will be able to
see and feel the fulfillment and
promise that Moshiach is here. l
Rabbi Mendy Deitsch is the director
of Chabad of the East Valley in
Chandler, Arizona.

Rethinking Fundraising for Jewish Education
BY SOLOMON D. STEVENS
I GET REQUESTS for donations
to Jewish organizations almost
every day. And there is no doubt
about it: Almost every request is
for a worthy cause.

Antisemitism (Judeophobia)
is rising. Israel is under assault.

People are in need. Buildings
must be built. And the list goes
on and on. I have no criti-
cism of any of this. However,
our people face an existential
14 DECEMBER 16, 2021
threat, and it does not get
enough fundraising attention
from Jewish organizations. Too
many of our own people are
drifting away from the religion.

Synagogue attendance is
down, and intermarriage is
up. More Jewish children are
growing up with only a vague
cultural or ethnic connection
to our religion. And this is
not enough to sustain us as
a people.

The answer to this is, as it
is with so many things, educa-
tion. But the once-a-week
religious school model that
dominates both the Reform
and Conservative movements
(which make up approximately
54% of American Jewry) is not
sufficient to keep young Jews
engaged or to cement their
attachment to Judaism. There
simply is not enough time with
this model to teach everything
that students need to know
to live vibrant, committed
Jewish lives.

I taught religious school for
many years, and the children
I taught were wonderful.

But it was always clear that
religious school was never the
center of their lives. It was an
add-on. Their secular lives
and secular education took up
most of their time. They paid
attention and did their work,
but I knew that they would
not retain what they studied.

It just wasn’t enough. We all
know how common it is for
young Reform or Conservative
Jews to attend religious school
and then abandon all Jewish
education after their bar or
bat mitzvah.

It is different for the various
Orthodox movements (which
account for approximately 9%
of American Jewry), where
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jewish day schools are the
norm. But there is a problem
here as well. These schools are
very expensive to run, and
tuition is often a real burden
for the Orthodox.

An article last year in
eJewish Philanthropy by
Sherwin Pomerantz, who is
on the board of directors of
the Pardes Institute of Jewish
Studies, was titled “US Jewish
Day School Tuition-Simply
Out of Control.” Orthodox
families are usually larger
than Reform or Conservative
families, so the cost of sending
multiple children to a private,
Orthodox school can be
prohibitive. Some elementary
schools cost around $20,000
a year per student, and high
schools are even more expen-
sive. Pomerantz estimated that
the total cost of sending his
own four grandchildren to
private Orthodox schools, from
kindergarten to 12th grade, is
approximately $1,184,000.

Yes, there are scholarships,
but they only help a little, and it
is not easy to qualify for them.

And imagine how expensive
it would be if you had more
than four children, as many
Orthodox families do.

This is unacceptable.

We are dealing with a quiet
crisis, and we need to treat
education as our main priority.

The Shema V’ahavta tells us to
“teach our children diligently,”
and we are not doing that
well enough. We need to help
our children know who they
are, where they come from
and what their place is in this
beautiful world. They need to
know the value of Jewish law
and ethics and the importance
of Israel to us all. They need to
know that they have a mission
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



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in life and that each of them
is an important part of that
mission. The strength of our
religion depends on education
more than anything else, and
today it is either insufficient or
too expensive.

We need a whole new gener-
ation of Jewish day schools.

Our fundraising organizations
need to re-evaluate their prior-
ities and focus on founding
new schools, supporting
existing schools and making
them all affordable with subsi-
dies or scholarships. This will
not be an easy task because
the religious differences of the
various Jewish movements
have to be taken into account.

One size will not fit all. But
what could be more important?
I call upon the leaders of
our Jewish organizations to
re-evaluate their fundraising
goals, so that they can make
possible the kind of Jewish
education that American Jews
clearly need, with a strong
religious education, combined
with the necessary secular
education to be successful in
life. This is what the soul of
American Jewry needs more
than anything. l
Solomon D. Stevens has a Ph.D.

from Boston College. His books
include “Religion, Politics, and
the Law” (co-authored with Peter
Schotten) and “Challenges to
Peace in the Middle East.”
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My Jewish Ancestors Owned Slaves.

That’s Why I’m a Rabbi for Racial Justice
BY RABBI BARRY BLOCK
IN “THE SOCIAL Justice Torah
Commentary,” Rabbi Brian
Stoller describes a turtle-shaped
dinner bell that his great-grand-
mother used to summon a Black
butler to attend to her needs at
the family’s Shabbat table.

When I got to that line while
editing the volume, I felt a jolt
of familiarity: An identical bell
served the same purpose at my
own grandmother’s table.

All of my grandparents
— and all four of my American-
born great-grandparents
— hailed from the South, and
social justice activism was not
baked into my DNA.

Yet unlike many “old”
southern families, I was raised
without glorification of the
Confederacy. As a preteen, I only
learned that both of my parents
are descended from Confederate
veterans because I asked. My
parents, members of the Silent
Generation, were not engaged
in the civil rights movement
of the 1960s. However, unlike
most members of the privileged
Houston Jewish community in
which they were raised and in
turn raised my sister and me, they
opened their eyes to social injus-
tice in the 1970s and exposed us to
progressive thought and activism,
rooted in Reform Jewish life.

As I neared the end of my
work on “The Social Justice
Torah Commentary,” a distant
relative sent me a page of the
1860 Louisiana slave census,
the first documentary proof
for me that an ancestor — my
great-great-great-grandmother, Magdalena Seeleman — was a
slaveholder. Magdalena
Gugenheim Seeleman was born Dec. 25,
1810, in Zweibrucken, Germany.

She first shows up in the U.S.

Census in New Orleans in 1850.

She is listed in the 1860 U.S.

Census as living in the home
of her daughter and son-in-law,
Simon and Caroline Shlenker,
in Trinity, Catahoula Parish,
Louisiana. According to the list
of parish slaveholders from June
22, 1860, “M. Seeleman” was the
owner of a 29-year-old woman
described as “mulatto.” Right
above, Simon is described as the
owner of a Black woman, age 25.

Simon’s brother Isaac was
married to Caroline’s sister
Charlotte; Isaac and Charlotte
were my great-great-grandpar-
ents. Isaac and Charlotte are not
on the list of slaveholders, but
a document says Isaac received
payment from the state of
Louisiana for serving as a prose-
cutor of escaped slaves. In an
advertisement dated April 10,
1861, Isaac “and Bro.” offer a
“Negro” for sale; the “girl” is
described as “young, healthy
and acclimated.”
The information is as horri-
fying as it is unsurprising.

When I visited The National
Memorial to Peace and Justice
in Montgomery in 2019, I found
memorials indicting Catahoula
Parish, Louisiana, where
Seeleman lived, as the site of
multiple racist terror lynchings.

All five of the other counties
and parishes where my family
thrived during the lynching era
are similarly accused there.

At Montgomery’s Legacy
Museum, I confronted a sign
offering a reminder that many
of the same families who
were enriched by enslaving
Black Americans continue to
enjoy that prosperity today.

Their wealth, inherited down
JEWISH EXPONENT
the generations, cannot be
separated from the enslaved
human beings that their — that
is, my — ancestors oppressed
to earn a generous living.

Earlier in my career as a rabbi,
not yet entirely aware of my
family history, I did not focus
on racial justice in my work, but
rather on immigration reform,
abortion rights and LGBTQ
equality. I became outspoken to
the point that, when I was seeking
to leave my previous congrega-
tion for a new pulpit, a friend in
lay leadership hoped that I would
look in “blue states.” Instead,
in 2013, I took the pulpit of
Congregation B’nai Israel in Little
Rock, Arkansas, where I was truly
awakened for the first time to the
moral urgency of advancing racial
equality in our nation.

Later, congregants — women,
in particular, including descen-
dants of the Confederate soldiers
who founded the congregation
— heeded Rabbi Sanders’ call to
organize against segregation in
public schools.

Rabbi Sanders retired the
summer I was born, a half
century before my arrival in
Little Rock. His predecessors
and successors, along with their
partners in lay leadership, estab-
lished a legacy of social justice
activism, calling on congre-
gants and me to continue that
critical work. Their legacy
inspires my belief that, rather
than solely focusing on the guilt
and shame of historical sins, the
best recourse is to take action to
repent for and rectify them.

As for the woman my ancestor
All of my grandparents — and all four of my
American-born great-grandparents — hailed
from the South, and social justice activism was
not baked into my DNA.

Founded in 1866 on the heels
of the Civil War, B’nai Israel
counts Confederate veterans
among its earliest leaders, men
who had risked their lives to
maintain chattel enslavement
of Black Americans. But the
synagogue’s subsequent history
shows how a commitment to
justice can emerge even in places
where racism and inequity
might initially have been baked
into its DNA.

When I joined the congre-
gation, members shared with
me the storied legacy of the
late Rabbi Ira E. Sanders, an
early hero of the civil rights
movement. During his first
months in Little Rock in 1926,
Rabbi Sanders lent his body to
the struggle against segrega-
tion, refusing to move from the
back of a streetcar. He would
go on to lead the integration
of Little Rock’s public library.

enslaved, my distant cousin has
been working to identify her, in
the hope of locating descendants
in order to offer at least some
form of reparations. I do not
know if we will ever be able to
name her or her descendants.

I dedicate “The Social Justice
Torah Commentary” and any
social activism I can muster to
her memory. And I pray that
the work we all do to advance
social justice today may serve
as tiny measures of atonement
for the grievous damage caused
by our nation, including my
ancestors, to her and millions
of Black Americans across four
centuries and counting. l
Rabbi Barry H. Block is the rabbi of
Congregation B’nai Israel in Little
Rock, Arkansas, and the editor of
“The Mussar Torah Commentary”
and “The Social Justice Torah
Commentary.” DECEMBER 16, 2021
15