Growing Up - Melanie Kelly
This week's thoughts come from Melanie Kelly. She is the Head of Children and Families Education at UJIA. She has worked in Jewish education in schools, shuls and communities for 25 years and is still excited and motivated to get out of bed every day, especially if it’s a day when she gets to work with young people. Melanie is married to Jeremy, another communal professional, and is mum to Harry and Samuel
This Shabbat many of our neighbours, friends and families will be sitting down for a family meal together. It may have traditional elements to the food, decorations, or rituals. It’s the 25th of December and for Christians that commemorates the birth of Jesus and for many other people living in the UK it’s a day off - the country stops, and we take a collective breather. Some of my best Christmas Days have been spent at Limmud, but also with friends and family around a dining table.
The story of Shemot is of course a story we often tell around a table in a few months’ time at Pesach on Seder night. This is another highly ritualised meal. Whereas Christmas has a universalistic message both to Christians and to those who live in Christian normative societies, where it has been adopted. Pesach is very particularistic; it’s about the start of the Jewish nation, a reinforcement of our otherness. It’s the start of the story that will culminate in the collective Mount Sinai experience and the receiving of Jewish law, a framework around which to live our lives as Jews.
In Chapter 2 we learn that after being discovered floating in the Nile and returned by his sister, Miriam, to his mother, Yocheved, to raise on behalf of Pharoah’s daughter; the child is returned and named Moshe. In verse 10 it says ‘vayigdal ha’yeled’ ‘When the boy grew up’. A verse later it says again ‘vayigdal’ this time Moshe; ‘when Moshe grew up’. What is the difference between the two growing ups?
In Shemot Rabba 1:31 the first growing up is explained as being about weening - the end of being a baby and toddler. Moshe is passive, unnamed by his birth family, being handed over to Batya, the daughter of Pharoah, for naming and the remainder of his childhood. He’s grown enough to be separated from his mother, to start his education. He has enough of his foundational identity to know who he is and where he comes from, but not yet enough to know what sort of person he has the potential to become.
A verse later the second ‘vayigdal’ is specifically about Moshe. He knows his name and knows his people. He combines the dual identity of his family heritage and the education he’s received as a result of his adoptive mother. He’s no longer passive but active in the vignette of story that follows. He goes out to see his people and is aware of the cruel situation under which they live and work and he decides to act.
As a Jewish educator I often think of the purpose of the education I’m involved in. Is it to fill young people with knowledge or is it to empower them with the autonomy to act on knowledge for a better world? Is it to connect them with their heritage, or is it to empower them to want to engage with that heritage and make it their own? Which ‘vayigdal’ am I aiming for?
And so, while we sit around our Shabbat or Christmas lunch tables, what sort of grown-ups are we going to be - passive or active, inspired by our heritage or reaching for something new? Or as with most binaries that rarely work, should we actually be aiming for somewhere between the two; part of a new growing up lesson that Moshe must learn during his time in Midian, before he can come close to G-d at the burning bush.