Helping Kids Relate to the Very Adult Concept of Yom Kippur

What do the number of baskets missed by Michael Jordan last year have to do with the solemn Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, when, starting tonight, Jews around the world atone for their sins?

Henry Friedman, 11, has the answer.

“It’s all about what his goals were and how much he missed the mark,” the boy said. “Our goals are to hit the 100% mark by committing no sins, and so are his. He wants to make a basket every time he tries.”

It’s not exactly the stuff of traditional Talmudic scholarship. But as teachers at Orange County’s Jewish schools struggle to prepare their students for Yom Kippur, the day when Jews renew their contract with God, their motto is, whatever works.

“It’s very hard. It’s such an adult holiday, and even adults have problems with it, with sitting still and contemplating your life,” said Eve Fine, principal of Morasha Community Day School in Aliso Viejo, which is in its 13th year of teaching the very difficult concepts of repentance and atonement, among a world of other things, to its grade-school students.

“But when you try to figure out how to teach it to kids, you realize it’s very straightforward. It’s about saying you’re sorry, and it’s about meaning it. And it’s about doing something to change.”

At sundown tonight, Henry Friedman’s parents and millions of other Jews around the world will walk through synagogue doors and into the toughest, most wrenching and ultimately most rewarding of times on the Jewish calendar.

For the 24 hours that conclude the yearly Days of Awe that began 10 days ago with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, they will fast. They will pray. In a communal ritual of repentance and renewal that dates back 4,000 years and which inspired the Catholic confessional, they will ask forgiveness, first of their fellow men and women, then of their God.

None of which has exactly the appeal to kids of yummy potato latkes on Hanukkah, sweet and chewy Purim hamantaschen or Passover’s matzoh ball soup. Which is exactly the sort of challenge teachers enjoy. And where the story about the feather pillow comes in.

Once upon a time, Jill Jacobs told her second-grade class at Morasha this week, there was a little boy who said something hurtful to a friend. Upset, the boy asked the rabbi what to do. The rabbi, a wise man, told him to take a feather pillow outside, cut it open, and let the feathers fall out. When the boy had done this, the rabbi said, he should go back outside and gather up all the feathers.

“I can’t do that; the feathers flew away in the wind,” protested the little boy.

“Exactly,” said the rabbi. “It is the same when you throw out words. You have to be very careful where you put them, because you can’t just gather them up and put them back.”

Eyes bright and hands stretching upward, the second-graders were quick with a moral to the story.

“Think first about what you’re gonna say, and then if it’s nice, do it,” said Kevin Naglie, 7. “If it’s not nice, don’t do it.”

By the time Kevin came out with that answer, he and his schoolmates had been studying about repentance and renewal for more than a week.

In religious class, they ate apples and honey to symbolize the beginning of a sweet New Year. In math and science classes, older students learned about how autumn leaves shed their chlorophyll to reveal their bright palette of colors, as shedding sins allows people’s brightness and promise to be revealed. And in writing classes, the students spun essays about leaves and Michael Jordan and spirituality and renewal.

“We’re not talking about adult sins for kids, but it’s a time to emphasize that even our young kids have to be responsible for their own behavior,” said Gerald Barkan, principal of the middle and high schools at Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Irvine.

“The normal process of living for a kid is finding out about relationships, and there’s a lot of that in Judaism. As a teacher you take the opportunity to say, here’s our value system. Have you said things that you should not have said? Have you spoken fairly? Kids know what it is to hurt somebody’s feelings. They learn early to say they’re sorry.”