At Makom our mission is deeply tied to the belief that Torah is always timely. When we learn Torah, there is always wisdom we can glean for right here and now. As we begin this school year, our goal is to create space within the safe container of Makom Community for our learners and their families to imagine…what would the world look like if more people were equipped to engage with the idea, “Justice, justice, shall you pursue…” (Deuteronomy 16:20)
This fall our learners and their families in Philadelphia are surrounded by heavy news. They are living in a swing state for an important presidential election, facing a year of heavy collective mourning and fear in Israel and Palestine, and navigating the challenging waters of what being a Jewish family means in the School District of Philadelphia. Our Lab School leadership knew many of the parents and caregivers in our community this fall would be struggling to contain their own pent up feelings about our world. No matter what adults like to tell ourselves, kids do not miss when the world is heavy for adults they love, even when adults leave that unsaid. So what does this look like in practice?
At Makom, it is our practice not to leave things unsaid, but instead to center the questions, thoughts, and learning of our youth learners. So here, too, it is not our role as educators to demand our particular approaches to pursuing justice of our learners. However, it is our honor to invite them to engage with the ideas of holiness and justice, to ask what connection they have with each other. We invite them to develop their own ideas and processes for what it means to be in active pursuit of justice and to engage with our prophetic tradition demanding that we do better when it feels like the whole world is falling apart.
Often “Justice, justice, you shall pursue” is shared without the second half of the clause. The full verse translates to, “Justice, justice you will chase after, that you may live and own the land that Adonai your God is giving you.” On the surface, this deeply connects to the news in the Middle East and if we zoom out, it opens a discussion: what are the rewards, the promises, and broken promises that come with justice? Is living and owning land metaphorical or concrete? Both? How as a society do we hold the pursuit of justice with people who think differently, with the need for compromise, and with the reality that justice does not always come when we want it to?
Given Makom’s particular position in the lives of our families, that means inviting our parents in to engage with these ideas too. Often in moments of difficult news headlines, parents struggle to find the right words or the right way to engage with their own children, through their own intense emotions. Our hope is that we can uplift the voices of children to find their own paths to pursue justice in this world and the voices of parents to turn to their children and say, “Well, in our family, we see it like this…” or “These are the kinds of things our family can do together to pursue justice right here in Philadelphia…”
And we can’t wait to see all the ways our incredible community of children and caregivers support each other through this next season and all the ways our world is better off for it. So yes, starting the year with tzedek is heavy. And it’s also a profound way to hold and relate to the power all Jewish wisdom has to offer us in this moment.
Torah is our compass. When we can connect to our ancestors who lived through hard times and made it back to good times, experienced injustice and worked to bring the world even a little closer to justice, we can house our own story in a larger, oscillating narrative. We are humans in a deeply interconnected world living through the ups and downs of life, not in isolation but in connection with each other today and with our ancestors who lived through ups and downs in their lifetimes. And all the while chasing after justice, even as elusive as it is.
