I Know Who the Bad Guys Are

At the start of every semester, in the first week of launching our Greek unit, my students evaluate Alexander the Great’s leadership qualities. They read about his military prowess, his pragmatic promotion of racial equality, his murderousness, his love for his mother, his alcoholism, and that he thought he was a god. The purpose of the exercise is twofold. Not only do they amass a great deal of information about Alexander the Great, but they also come to the understanding that history is complicated, that no person in it is wholly good or wholly evil, that as much as they ask me, throughout the semester, whether it was Louis XIV or Robespierre or Napoleon who was really the bad guy, I will not have an answer for them. Because neither history nor good and evil are quite so accessibly decidable.

Yet, if school was still in session, and my students came to me and asked about the three Israeli teenagers (Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali) who were kidnapped by Hamas on Thursday on their way home from school and whose families are awaiting their return, I would have an answer. The bad guys are obvious.

Many seem undecided. The Germans are still trying to ascertain whether it is a kidnapping (one of the boys placed a call to the police saying he'd been kidnapped, you morons). The EU is keeping a careful feeble silence. The New York Times is upset that the “growing search for them [the boys] and their captors [will] further destabilize Israeli-Palestinian relations,” which would make perfect sense if it wasn’t the kidnapping itself that was causing the search—that’s like blaming firemen for dumping water on your house instead of the arsonists who lit the fire. Impeccable logic. Oh, how embarrassing to be American!

Interestingly, it’s the IDF’s own website that provided me with the most pause. They posted how Palestinians see kidnapping as their only strategy to seek the return of their relatives who sit in Israeli prisons and have celebrated the kidnapping by passing out candy. Now, let’s put to the side the fact that it’s representatives of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has as its stated purpose the destruction of Israel, in prison, and that three high school students, boys who never committed a crime against anyone, who have been kidnapped. The Palestinians in jail are somebody’s sons, somebody’s brothers, and they want them free. That makes sense. But instead of continuing with their hunger strike, instead of attracting world opinion to their cause, or working through legal channels, their answer is to kidnap other people’s sons, brothers, family. 

  

When I taught in Norway for a year, I spent a morning discussing capital punishment with two of my ninth grade Norwegian students. One of them lost several close friends in the shooting at Uttøya a month before. The other survived the shooting by hiding in a bathroom and mourned friends who had been there with her. They were both positive that killing Breivik, the shooter, would be a horrible thing to do. That it would somehow compound the evil of his massacre. Though he was evil, they would not become evil. The lesson they learned from their suffering was compassion. 

This is the same lesson that Jews who walked out of the gates of Auschwitz spread: Never Again, for anyone. This is the lesson we relive every Passover when we think back to our national formation and remember how we were slaves in Egypt—as we were oppressed, so shall we be compassionate. This is the lesson that terrorists count on to keep us from giving them what they deserve-- that we will use a disproportional restraint because of our memories of oppression and fears of being the oppressors. Every time I hear that Hamas leaders in Gaza have been arrested, a trickle of fear goes through me-- did our soldiers dehumanize them at all, and thus themselves? Did little children watch their fathers be arrested? Are they sure it was the right men --Hamas leaders-- they took to jail? Did they follow the IDF protocol of being attacked before they are allowed to shoot (what other army in the world would dream of that?!)? Even the photos of Palestinians eating candy to celebrate our boys' kidnapping cannot erase these thoughts from my mind, and right now, I oughtn't to have the luxury of compassion for them-- I ought only to have prayer for our boys. But compassion remains because it is not, in fact, a luxury. It is a necessity.

Students of mine, I cannot teach you about this event next year. It will not be in our contemporary unit, because I cannot teach this without bias. I can let you make up your own minds about whether Alexander the Great was great and whether the Industrial Revolution had more pros than cons, but not this. Right now, in this day and age, the kidnappers of three innocent high school boys are the bad guys. Those who take their own misery and try to spread and multiply it, to share it among the innocent, are evil. If freshman high school students who have survived a terrorist attack in Norway can figure that out, so can Palestinian adults. The lesson of morality, of taking one's struggles and using them to become a better person, are what makes us human. 

Students of mine, I know who the bad guys are. And I'm so frightened. Because three high school students, just your age, are in their grasp. So as I sit in the school media center, planning your curriculum for next year and hitting refresh on Haaretz every thirty seconds, all I can think about is the one message I want you to learn: It doesn't matter one whit whether Alexander the Great loved his mama or killed his own men. What matters is that you are the good guys. That you become able to take your hardships (and life has dealt you a deep stack of hot mess, I know) and turn them into compassion; that you take your struggles and use them as a moral compass. Be the good guys. Be the good guys. 

Please, if you pray, pray for these boys: Yaakov Naftali ben Rachel Devorah, Gilad Michael ben Bat Galim, and Eyal ben Irim Teshurah. 

Don't Ever Let Go of the Thread

All my life, since I was first aware that I was aware, I’ve held the exquisite beauty of the world cupped in my hands. Sometimes I bring it close and inhale the scent of life, sometimes I lap it up fiercely, and sometimes it’s enough just to know it’s there, sliding back and forth between my palms. But at one point, deep in the awakening that comes in those years of middle school epiphany that I’m not the only person on the earth, came the compulsion to share it. To scatter the zest of living to a world that seems sleepily, leisurely interested in licking its own wounds instead of celebrating its existence.

There are many ways to do this. I’ve experimented with several. But right now teaching seems the best. It lets you spread the beauty, share the beauty, and also experience the beauty. 

We watched the buses roll out today with a weird mixture of exhilaration and nostalgia.  Our kids are gone. Yesterday we administered their last exams. I was responsible for a class of fifteen twelfth graders, laboriously struggling through a James Joyce excerpt that some jerk of a testing official thought would be funny to put on the English 12 exam. Asshole. One of the kids kept turning the pages of his exam and then fluttering his hand in front of his face, saying “oh my” in a breathy little voice. Every time I caught his eye, I grinned—couldn’t help it. Another kid had a little gas problem mid-exam, but for the most part they behaved well, especially when they saw that I was un-interested in their shenanigans.

It was fun to talk to seniors, before and after the exam; one of my favorite kids from my homeroom is in the class and went haywire with excitement when I walked through the door. He gave me a good rep—the class is notoriously difficult, and he had everyone turning in their phones and eagerly hushing each other so I could read directions. We also yeeted a little to blow off steam before the test. Afterwards, as I was getting ready to leave, a group of three seniors came up to the desk, led by the boy who went “oh my.”

“Are you an angel?”

“What?”

“Are you an angel?”

“Why are you asking that?”

“Because how you came in, when you walked through the door you were happy, and smiling, and you keep smiling, and how you look… you must be an angel.”

I took stock quickly: I’m wearing a pencil skirt and a faded blue blouse that’s at least three years old. My hair is up in a messy bun and I’m nursing bruises down my left leg from where I decided to run into my stairwell. My bag is stuffed with books and folders, and I’m leaning on the desk to keep it from ripping. I’m certainly not angelic-looking.

“Huh?!”

“You just, you must be an angel. Your smile.”

Kids, I smile for you. You make me smile, with your earnestness, your silliness, the way you furrow your brows when you concentrate, and the stupid things that make you laugh. And outside this school, people smile all the time. They just do. Not to be angels, to be humans. Welcome to the world.

As I was walking back to my ninth graders, I passed the veteran teacher who’d proctored for me on Friday. He’s intimidated me ever since the first week of school, when he caught me making 60+ copies on the copy machine (I didn’t even know the word Riso then, let alone what it was to be used for). He stopped me by the bathrooms.

“Ms. W, I just wanted to say, I was really impressed by your control of your classroom on Friday. You told them to hush and they all hushed. Great classroom management. Are you going to be back next year?”

Oh, yes! Yes I am! And thank you, veteran teacher, for bolstering my confidence.

In my class, we sat and watched Olympus has Fallen, and I bemoaned the fact that multiple children asked whether that was actual footage. Yes, kids, this is exactly like that time the White House was captured by the North Koreans, but luckily Gerard Butler was there to save the day.

At the end of the day, I told two kids they could rip the paper coverings off the windows—big mistake. They began ripping everything they could find (luckily most of my classroom was already dismantled). My MLK poster, proclaiming the necessity of love and light, is now in two pieces. Some might call that ironic.

Today, only about a third of students came to school. In my classes we watched Valkyrie or The Croods and played Two Truths and A Lie and sat around chatting. I pulled kids in from the hallway where they were running around and disturbing people, and made them sit in my class. By the end of the day, half the students that were leaning forward, watching The Croods and sucking the last of my candy hoard, weren’t even mine. But those who were mine jumped to my desk at the end to take selfies with me and trade hugs and promise they’d visit me next year. 

So, my first year teaching is over. It doesn’t feel dramatic enough. At the end, the kids swarmed onto the buses just like every other day, and I waved and watched them go with a mixture of triumph and heartbreak. Everything they learned, everything they taught me is jumbled up in all our brains, and I hope poignantly that some of it sticks. If not, at least I taught them, and they taught me, to smile.

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

-William Stafford

In Pursuit Of God

My first class took their first exam. Immediately as I passed the tests out, half the class went to sleep. One plugged her thumb in her mouth. Another snored gently. Two others engaged in flicking each other off by rubbing their middle fingers casually across their heads and ears as though scratching. One star pupil decided to take off both his sneakers and clean them. I walked around the room, desperately tapping on desks—it’s the only way I’m allowed to wake the kids up. One girl cocked an eyebrow at me the second time I did it, and when I gestured to her test, she sat up. My grin must have cracked my face in half, and she set to work with a good will when she saw how happy it made me. She, and the industrious, attitude-filled student up front who quietly went about the test, underlining phrases and looking over her work with such a solid attitude it made me joyous, got me through that exam, until the point of half an hour left when my kids all set to with a good will. Afterwards, my proctor told me he thought my kids probably did really well, based on the amount of attention they gave the exam.

“All except that one fellow with the shoes. He didn’t take it seriously, not at all.”

Afterwards I showed Freedom Writers, and kids started rapping along with Tupac. They leaned into the movie. They were very proud that they know what the Holocaust is.

Shavuot was lovely, perhaps my favorite holiday with its focus on cheesecake and Torah learning. The parts of Judaism that really matter. I had several of the young Jewish community over for dinner, and our conversation took a fascinating plunge into the intricacies of rabbinic guidance. It left me cogitating upon the ways my spiritual outlook has shaped itself over my adult life, from Israel, to Norway, to Toronto, to here.

This year in North Carolina has many things in common with the year I spent in Norway. In both places I ventured outside my regular rounds, met people with lives wildly different from my own, stretched my abilities and challenged myself, and learned more about what kind of world I want to make than ever before. However, as the year winds down, I find myself thinking about how powerfully G-d entered both places, both parts of my life.

To be fair, Norway and North Carolina were bookended by cities on my personal timeline that couldn’t help but make G-d look good elsewhere. Toronto is lacquered with a hard, shiny materialism that leaves no place for G-d to get a purchase. The synagogues were full of stylish atheists; the university of intelligent agnostics. In Jerusalem, on the other hand, G-d is spread thin by a population that voices Him so often, the city is suffocated in a meaningIess membrane of divinity, with gaping holes in it where children poked at Him too hard as they do with a ball of silly putty stretched tight and clear.

After Israel, it was muvan maalav that I find Norway charged with the grandeur of G-d. Not a moment passed without a heady sense of heaven. G-d gave Norway so much beauty, there is little left in comparison for the rest of the world. Nothing can approximate the allure of the country. Dahl’s paintings are faint eldritch echoes of the landscape; Tennyson’s lines hang scantily across the mountain ranges; Grieg’s symphonies ring tinkling next to the roaring power of fjord and fosse. There was little left but to praise G-d with every breath, to salute work well done with every step, to wonder how it is possible to live other than with the exaltation and simply pleasure in life that the Norwegians so encapsulate.

North Carolina is not as gaspingly gorgeous as Norway. It does not impress one with the sheer necessity of G-d at every look. One does not breath in a blend of salt spray and mountain breeze that comes from Elysium. Yet, G-d is persistent here. 

Here where a student focuses on her work despite the chaos around her, unbendingly and stubbornly pursuing a path to college despite pregnant friends, a drunken father, a school with more weed available than books. G-d is here with a teenage boy who fears every day that he will be deported, but nonetheless rises through halting English to the top of the class. G-d is here with the gang member who smiles boyishly as he explains his tattoos and offers to stay late to reset the desks in the classroom. G-d gives strength to the girl whose father was shot before her eyes just a month ago, sending her into school to succeed. G-d watches the one who has spoken of suicide, the one who’s scared of bullies but nevertheless comes to learn, the one with a learning disability who’s made friends with the child who can coach him through. At every second, in the children’s laughter, in their politenesses, the way they ask to clean the board and ring out cheerfully in morning greetings to their teachers and hold each other tight when something has gone horribly wrong, there is some divinity at work, holding us all through and bringing us out the other side. In a year filled with the most difficult moments, I have never been so aware of finding grace.

I Step Outside Myself
I step outside
myself, out of my eyes,
hands, mouth, outside
of myself I
step, a bundle
of goodness and godliness
that must make good 
this devilry that has happened. 

-Ingeborg Bachmann