Definitions and Boundaries of Responsibility

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

This activity introduces the idea of responsibility and tries to ask basic questions: what are we responsible for? Does a feeling of responsibility have to include a willingness to act in order to help or protect the thing for which we feel responsible? Does the idea of Jewish responsibility say anything to you?

Materials Needed

• Copies of the diagram with the concentric circles for each participant
• Some large pieces of paper, or a whiteboard on which to write the definitions of responsibility

Time Needed

30-40 minutes, depending on the size of the group and the amount of time you want to give to group discussion.

Directions for Activity

1. In small groups let the participants come up with the group’s meaning of “responsibility.” What do they think that the word actually means? Coming together, see if you can come up with a definition of the word accepted by the whole group.
2. Back in small groups, let each group try and suggest a list of up to ten things for which they feel responsibility. They might choose things such as my family, pets, studies, friends, schoolmates, youth group, the environment etc.
3. Now give them the following diagram and ask each group to decide in which of these five categories the things they have listed best fit. Are there other categories not mentioned? In the list above, for example, studies would come under the category of “self,” pets might come under the category of “self” or under “family” (as would, obviously, family), friends, schoolmates and youth group might come under the category of “Jewish community” or “population of country of residence,” while the environment might go under the category, “world.”
4. Bring the groups together and compare the results. What, if any, conclusions can be drawn about the feeling of responsibility that the group has for things larger than themselves? What is the meaning of feeling responsibility for something larger than yourself or your family? Can there be any real meaning or is it only words? Is this merely a theoretical belief, a vague feeling or are there practical implications? Can you really feel for a Jewish community or people, a country or a world? Any other big group?
5. Go back to the definition. Does the definition of responsibility include obligation or duty or some other aspect that indicates the need to do something about or towards the things for which we feel responsible? Is responsibility without an element of action meaningful?
6. Talk about the Jewish idea of responsibility. Introduce them to the phrase כל ישראל עריבים זה לזה – All Jews are responsible for one another. Does the phrase have any meaning for them? Can they relate to the idea? Why or why not?

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Responsible for Whom?

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?  Note that this activity is closely linked to the educational questions raised in the Universal vs. Particular section of the site.

Goal

• To consider what special responsibilities Jews have toward other Jews.
• To consider the tension between our responsibility toward other Jews and our universal desire to help all people

Time

45 minutes-1 hour

Materials

• Video clip, screening device and internet connection
• List of value statements for Barometer Activity
• Text from Just Action

Direction for Activity

1. Ask participants to respond to the following set of value-centered questions through the “barometer” game. One end of the room represents “yes” the other end represents “no” and everywhere in between those two extremes represents a position somewhere in the middle. When you read each statement, ask participants to stand somewhere along the barometer (e.g. somewhere in the room that reflects their position in favor or against the statement being read.) Once they are have answered one question, ask a few people to quickly share why they chose to stand where they did to get a sense of the different opinions in the room. (This game works well if you have several “warm up” statements like “I love chocolate ice cream” or “The Fourth of July is my favorite American holiday” or “Sunbathing is not fun.”)

• I love my family more than I love other people.
• I will help anyone who asks for help.
• I love hosting people at my home.
• If a Jew needs a place to go for a holiday or Shabbat meal, I want them to come to my house.
• I only like to host people who are my friends.
• I feel responsible for all people.
• I feel a special responsibility for other Jews, even if I don’t know them.

2. Conclude the game by asking participants to share what they noticed, and if their reactions to any of the statements surprised them.

3. Watch the clip from the award winning Israeli film Ushpizin (2004)

Cue: 30:42- 36:50

4. Facilitate a discussion around questions of responsibility for other Jews through the text produced by Hillel and Panim.

In particular, ask participants to reflect on the questions – who do we define as our brothers, and what does it mean for us to be responsible for them?

5. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

All of Israel is Responsible for One Another

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

• To think about who we help, who we don’t and why.
• To consider how the Jewish tradition of ‘Kol Yisrael arevim zeh b’zeh’ (‘All Jews are responsible for one another’) helps motivate us to help other Jews in need.

Time Needed

45 minutes – 1 hour

Materials

• Video clip, screening device and internet connection
• Copies of the Survey

Direction for Activity

1. Introduce the concept of the “Bystander Effect” and show the clip.
2. Ask participants to share their general reactions. What did they find surprising or compelling about the clip?
3. Now introduce the concept “Kol Yisrael Arevim zeh b’Zeh”.

The concept is first seen in the Talmud (Shavuot 39a) and is translated as “All of Israel is responsible for one another.” In its original context it had to do with the responsibility that one Jew had toward another to prevent him/her from sinning. Understood more broadly it lies at the foundation of Jewish communal responsibility. Each Jew needs to ensure the well being of every other Jew (and vice versa.)

 4. Give the participants a one-page survey in which they have to complete the following questions. Don’t give them too long to complete these, they should be their “gut feelings.”

• When I see a person asking for money on the street I feel…
• If a stranger who is like me asks me for help on the street I will…
• When I hear about a disaster that has happened far away from home what I do is…
• When I give to charity the first people I think of helping are…
• When someone in my family needs help I…
• When I need help the first person I ask is…
• The last time I needed some kind of help (financial or otherwise) what I did was…
• When I hear the phrase Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh B’zeh it makes me feel…

5. Ask them to choose a study partner (also called chevruta) or simply turn to the person next to them to share their answers. What surprised them about what they or their chevruta wrote? Is the concept “Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh B’zeh” a relevant concept to for each of them? Why or why not?

6. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Freedom 25

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To learn more about the movement to free Soviet Jewry, the most effective human rights movements in recent Jewish history, and glean lessons about the power of Jewish solidarity.

Time Needed

1 hour (or over several sessions)

Materials

• Video clip, screening device and internet connection
• Material for research project
• Reading from Azure journal

Directions for Activity

1. Watch the clip produced by Freedom 25, an organization whose purpose is to teach about the American Jewish community’s efforts to free Soviet Jewry.

For a more in depth understanding of the 30 year- movement to free Soviet Jewry, watch Refusenik Movie.

2. Consider the questions:

What motivated American Jews to become involved in a movement to help a people who lived a world away, behind the Iron Curtain?

If you were there, what motivated you? If not, how would your parents or grandparents answer that question?

3. Consider extending this activity to include a research project. Ask participants to interview parents or other friends who were involved in the Struggle for Soviet Jewry. What do they remember? Why did they get involved? What lessons did it leave them with? Interview refuseniks, who live in your community. What are their memories of the Former Soviet Union and the process of being able to freely emigrate? How did their knowledge that Jews around the world were fighting for their release impact them? Generate your own questions. And present your findings to the group.
4. Bring in the following essay written by Yossi Klein Halevi to widen the conversation:

Forty years ago, in the early spring of 1964, an imposing man in his late thirties, tall, with a Vandyke beard, a British accent, and a Russian-style fur hat, appeared on the campus of Yeshiva University in upper Manhattan, and began knocking on dormitory doors. For weeks, he went from room to room, soliciting support for a cause of which few people had yet heard: Saving the Jews of the Soviet Union.

The man, Jacob Birnbaum, had arrived in New York from Manchester, England, the previous year with the aim of convincing American Jews to rise up against what he called the “spiritual genocide” of Soviet Jewry. Only the Jews of the United States, he insisted, had the resources and connections that could make a difference. The Soviet Union was not impervious to world opinion, he told anyone who would listen. With the end of Stalin’s irrational rule, the Soviets—fearful of a rising China and desperate for technology and trade to infuse its failing economy—would increasingly turn to the United States for help, making the Kremlin vulnerable to economic pressure. With enough determination, American Jews could pressure the Soviet Union into concessions to prevent the cultural and religious extinction of Soviet Jewry. What was needed, Birnbaum insisted, was for Jews to shrei gevalt—to cry out in protest…

Historians will argue over the precise role played by American Jews in securing the ultimate release of more than a million Soviet Jews. And yet, the grassroots movement begun in America in the early 1960s possessed in embryonic form all the central themes of what would eventually become a worldwide campaign. What is scarcely realized, however, is that this American movement owed almost all its political vision and strategic thinking to a single man. From the idea of confronting the Soviets through the vocal protest tactics of the civil rights movement; to the insistence that only the full-scale emigration of Soviet Jews, and not the easing of the restrictions they faced, could remedy their plight; to the belief in mounting pressure on the administration in Washington to put Soviet Jewry high on the international agenda; to focusing the Soviet Jewry campaign on the plight of individual refuseniks—all these were the product of Jacob Birnbaum’s efforts during the movement’s earliest years. All these ideas were first put into practice by his shoestring organization, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), which during the 1960s set the tone for the entire American movement to free Soviet Jews.

For this reason, Richard Maass, the first chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, called Birnbaum the “conscience for Soviet Jews,” adding that SSSJ was “frequently several steps ahead of the other agencies” of organized American Jewry in understanding the nature of the struggle. The historian Martin Gilbert likewise called Birnbaum the “father of the Soviet Jewry movement.”⁴

Beyond its contribution to the freedom of more than a million Jews, the movement would bring about a major change in the way American Jews viewed themselves, giving them the confidence and political experience to take a far greater degree of responsibility for the fate of the Jews around the world. Before the mid-1960s, American Jews were reluctant to pursue Jewish causes publicly for fear of rousing anti-Semitism and jeopardizing their inroads into American society. Within the last generation, however, activism for Jewish issues has become a central feature of American Jewish life—such as combating anti-Semitism, campaigning to rescue Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s, and promoting lobbying groups such as the America-Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC). This degree of public activism is unprecedented in the history of the diaspora, and it may not be an exaggeration to say that it is largely a product of the Soviet Jewry movement, which trained a generation of young American Jews to believe that no threat to Jewish life and memory can go unchallenged.

All of this began, to no small extent, with one man knocking on students’ doors.

Yossi Klein Halevi, Azure (Spring 2004)

5. Wrap up the conversation with the quote from Malcom Hoenlein in the clip “Jews have an interesting way of looking at Jewish history, we look back in order to look forward.”  What are lessons that the struggle to free Soviet Jewry can have for us today? What are the issues around which we (as individuals or a collective) will shrei gevalt over?

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Nachshon and Crossing the Red Sea

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 Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To “get inside” the Exodus story and understand what motivates and hinders us from taking the initiative to help other Jewish people in need.

Time

30-45 minutes

Materials Needed

• Exodus 14:10-15
• Copies of the Midrash
• Clip by G-dcast, internet connection and screening device

Directions for Activity

1. Ask participants to think about a time when they “put themselves out there” to help someone in need especially when it wasn’t the popular thing to do.

2. Introduce them to the character from the Exodus story, Nachshon Ben Aminadav who, the Midrash relates, helped save the Israelites from the Pharoah’s advancing army by taking the first steps into the Red Sea and through his actions encouraged the rest of the Israelites to follow.  For context read what Chabad has to say on the topic.

3. Now watch the clip by G-dcast: Parashat Beshalach: The Story of Nachshon.
4. Conduct a short “Bibliodrama” session in which you “get inside” the story of the Midrash. For more background on Bibliodrama read this.
5. Begin the bibliodrama by reading the text from the Midrash:

Rabbi Judah says: ‘When the Israelites stood at the sea one said: ‘I don’t want to go down to the sea first.’ Another said: ‘I don’t want to go down first either.’ While they were standing there, and while Moses was praying to God to save them, Nachshon the son of Aminadav jumped up, went down and fell into the waves.’”  Talmud (Bavli, Sota 36a), Mechilta (Parashat B’shalach)

6. Choose different points to stop at and ask questions of your participants. For example, after reading the first line, turn to someone and say ‘Israelite – why don’t you want to go to the sea, what are you afraid of? Don’t you believe God will protect you?’ Read a bit more and turn to someone else and say “Moses, tell me what you are arguing with God about?” You can even turn to someone and ask them to give voice to the waves or another inanimate object in the story, “Waves – what did you think of this Nachshon character?” or “Did you feel the other waves tremble around you or did you think it was just another day at the beach?” Have fun with it!

7. For a more expanded activity, apply the same methodology and start with the story from Exodus 14:10-15 and then read the Midrash.

(Note: the story of Nachshon does not appear in the Torah, but is added later to fill in the story by the Rabbis who authored the Midrash.)

8. Sum up the discussion and ask participants to share a question or idea they are left with.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understanding that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Community First?

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To explore the tension between communal responsibility and individual needs

Time

30-45 minutes

Materials Needed

Copies of  Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Ta’anit 11a

Copies of text from Hillel (see below)

Directions for Activity

1. Ask participants to share one way that they react when they hear that there is trouble in their community (all responses are welcome, and encourage participants to speak honestly.)
2. Present the Talmudic text about the tension between Individual vs. Communal needs to the whole group, Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Ta’anit 11a.
3. Divide the large group into smaller ones and ask each subgroup to come up with a situation that reflects the dilemma in the text. Then act out that situation for the group.
4. After all the scenes have been acted out, have a discussion within the larger group about the principle.
   • How do people feel about exerting the kind of moral pressure that the text suggests?
   • Even if in general they think that it is a reasonable suggestion, how do they think the Rabbis should have presented it – as a suggestion or recommendation? Or should they have presented it as an expected rule which people are expected (or even commanded) to follow (which is the rabbinic formulation)?
   • Have the group consider whether this text is altogether outdated. Perhaps the Rabbis opinion was written at a time when Jews had to rely on themselves to a large degree and in today’s world where this is no longer true, perhaps the opinion is less relevant. Agree or Disagree?

5. To wrap up, bring in the quote from Hillel to give a different rabbinic perspective and to introduce the notion of balance:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14)

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understandings that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Collective Responsibility without Limits?

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Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To explore how the concept of collective responsibility to other Jews can be both a burdensome and empowering.

Time

30-45 minutes

Materials Needed

• Copies of the Vidui (Confession) Text
• Paper
• Pens/Pencils

Directions for Activity

1. Introduce the group to the Vidui (Confession) text. Do they know it? Where is it from? When is it recited?
2. Ask every individual to choose the “sins” that they think are applicable to them from this list. Concentrating on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, do they think that it is reasonable to confess “their sins” (i.e. the relevant ones for them)? Why? Why not?
3. Now discuss the ones that they don’t think they have done? Ask why we are asked to confess sins that we ourselves have not committed? What logic can there be in such a “meaningless” confession?
4. After presenting the collective logic behind the idea (use the Explanation of Text to help frame the argument) discuss how they feel being saddled with everyone else’s sins? What do they think about the idea of collective responsibility for the Jewish People, which stands behind the ashamnu prayer?
5. Can they think of a current example of feeling responsible for another’s Jews’ misdeeds? (Jonathan Pollard on the one hand and Bernie Madoff on the other come to mind.) Is there something comforting about the feeling that other Jews are responsible for yours?
6. Create an opportunity for personal reflection. Ask everyone to take a page and write out 3-4 sins that they see as the sins of the collective (ex. “We have caused environmental damage” or “we have embezzled money” etc.) Then ask them to write down 1-2 steps that they as individuals will take to remedy those collective sins. Have participants share what they wrote and tease out the dynamic of individual’s responsibility toward collective problems.

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understandings that you set out to teach surface during this activity?

Collective Prayer

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 Before You Get Started

Look at the list of enduring understandings, which one would you like to emphasize through this activity?

Goal

To explore how communal prayer can be a window into the notion of mutual responsibility

Time

30-45 minutes

Materials Needed

• Copies of the Vidui (Confession) Text
• Poster board and markers

Directions for Activity

1. Ask participants to brainstorm what the purpose of prayer is for Jews? Who is it for? Is it for the individual’s spiritual connection with something greater or are there other reasons behind it?
2. Present the Vidui confession/prayer in context.
3. Divide the group into smaller ones and ask them to modernize the ashamnu prayer so that it feels relevant for Jews today. Would they change the prayer? If so, how?
4. Let the groups present their finished product to the whole group and use that to lead into a discussion around the question of collective vs. individual responsibility.
5. Present the idea of the minyan, the group of 10 Jews, without which many of the important parts of the Jewish prayer (including kaddish, the mourner’s prayer and barkhu the call to prayer) cannot take place. Why would others have to be present for specific moments in a prayer service to take place?
6. Create a space for personal reflection. Ask participants to share if they have ever been asked to be the 10^th for a minyan or otherwise “needed” for communal prayer. How did they feel? (Inconvenienced? Like it was a privilege?)

Note to Educator

Did the enduring understandings that you set out to teach surface during this activity?