1. Teaching Midrash to Children
Theory into Practice

2. Why Midrash? Midrash is basic to Judaism-
Philosophy (God/Torah/Israel/Humans)
Values (din-rahamim/teshuvah/mitzvah)
Aggadah vs Halakhah is the “soul” of Judaism—poetry, emotion, legend, creativity (Heschel/Bialik)
“If you desire to know Him by whose word the universe came into being, study the aggadah”-Sifre

3. What is Midrash? Oral Torah
Creative interpretation of Torah/Bible in every age to make it relevant
Response to a changing world
Addresses eternal questions and issues (Heinemann/Zunz/Bloch)
Midrash is both process and product

4. Initiate child into this process & product
Has been peripheral and taught via Rashi/Tales of Rabbis
Child should “create” midrashim
Child should experience traditional midrashim-discussion, inquiry, analysis
Midrash belongs in curriculum “attached” to Bible study (not only as “Rashi”)

5. Midrashic Techniques and the Child
Narrative—filling in gaps in story
Parable—comparisons to concrete world
Metaphor, imagery
Dialogues
Creative/mythical thinking and interpretation
Seem appropriate to child’s imaginative thinking

6. Children’s Thinking Cognitive thinking (Piaget)
Ages 7-10 Concrete Operational: need concrete data to understand concepts
Ages 12+ Formal Operations: can manipulate ideas mentally, reason hypothetically, and think abstractly

7. Metaphoric Thinking (Howard Gardner)
Ages Visual-Sensory: focuses on physical characteristics (bald head=“barefoot head” Pharaoh hardens heart-physical)
Ages 10+ Psychological: symbolic understanding (spring is a lady in a new coat, make hay while the sun shines)
E.g. The prison guard was a hard rock

8. Storytelling
Ages 7-10 focuses on plot/”facts”-can’t understand character motivation
Ages 10+ can interpret the story from “the outside”; understands conflict and motivations

9. Religious Thinking 1 (Ronald Goldman)
Ages 7-10 (concrete)-splitting of Sea: can’t explain how wind blew the water not the Israelites
Ages 12+ (formal)- Can give figurative explanations
Don’t teach Bible before teen years!

10. Religious Thinking 2 (James Fowler)
Ages Mythic Literal-loves mythical stories; grasps meaning “directly”
Myth can have powerful meaning (Bettelheim)
Ages 13+ conceptualizes meaning of mythic stories
Although children cannot abstract and conceptualize philosophical meanings behind Midrash, they can grasp meanings which lead to later understanding

11. Teaching Strategies Appropriate to Midrashic Thinking
Mashal (parable)- synectics
Drama/ Dialogue- bibliodrama (Peter Pitzele)
Story – creative writing
Creative Interpretation- the arts (torn paper midrash-Jo Milgrom)

12. Dual Focus
Creating Midrash (Process)—gets “inside” story and prepares child for discussion of classic Midrash (How did Abraham discover God?)
Analyzing Midrash (Product)—allows child to encounter traditional Midrash through inquiry and analysis.

13. Example Lesson-the vbx- thorn bush
I am a thorn bush.
I feel______________
When people come near me, I_________
When the Israelites were in Egypt how was it like being in a thorn bush?

14. A Midrash (Shemot Rabba 2,5)
Just as the thorn bush is the sharpest of all trees, and any bird that enters the thorn bush does not come out in peace, so too the slavery of Egypt was sharp and difficult.
What do the thorn bush/ bird symbolize?
What does it mean they did not come out “in peace”

15. Rabbi Alvan Kaunfer Providence, R.I.
rund khz Go and Learn!
Rabbi Alvan Kaunfer
Providence, R.I.