Thinking About What to Teach on Shavuot? Consider America!

Each year Shavuot offers an opportunity and a challenge. We have an opportunity to remind our communities about the transformative power of studying Torah, and we face the challenge of overbooked calendars, distracted congregants, and exhaustion at the end of the school year. Against this reality, the need for Shavuot’s message becomes more urgent with each year. Our media-saturated, algorithmically manipulated, technologically exhausted minds are bombarded with messages, each shouting its claim on truth. But Shavuot says that Torah, and particularly the Jewish way of reading Torah, what we call parshanut, can be the antidote.

Well, in our time, the competing claims of truth have become a crisis of democracy. Abetted by sophisticated messaging and tech operations, political operatives have become what’s known as “conflict entrepreneurs,” emphasizing our divisions and toxifying our civic spaces. What can mere rabbis do? Our hypothesis is that parshanut can help.

Here’s the basic methodology: we take American texts, some famous, some more obscure, but all speaking to core ideas about our country, and we apply our Jewish way of reading and talking to them. That’s it. Then we watch how people learn that what really drives our politics are questions about our identities, our narratives, the stories and ideas that hold us together as a nation. Despite what the conflict entrepreneurs want us to believe, none of these issues are binary, none are simple, and all are amenable to conversation between neighbors, community members, and citizens.

In over seven years of practice, with a pilot cohort of 10 congregations, and with over 200 subscribers in the past six months, American Scripture Project has shown that our methodology strengthens communities, reignites patriotism, complexifies conversation, and cultivates healthy civic norms (some of which can directly help your congregation’s meeting culture).

First, consider grabbing one of our DafAmerica posts to use for this Shavuot. DafAmerica is an abbreviated version of American Scripture Project that pairs an American text with the weekly parasha. It uses shorter texts or excerpts and requires less preparation. All Dapim are free. Parashat Yitro, dedicated to the Declaration of Independence, might be a good place to start. Vayehi may also provide a nice foundation, as it introduces the importance of narrative to your learners. But any of the posts can start a conversation in your community, and if you advertise in advance, you may even bring in a few people who have no idea what Shavuot is.

Then, consider signing up for the full nine-session American Scripture Project program. This program can be used at any time, but starting this fall, we will begin a second cohort of congregations, who will progress through it together. We will supplement each session (designed to be 90 minutes) with dedicated monthly coaching sessions, open comments on the website with ideas from peers, and collaboration across the group. Registration for this program is now open.

As part of registration, we ask each new congregation to subscribe as a Founding Member and make a $500 donation. If that poses a challenge for you, please reach out.

Our first Info Session will be on July 24 at 2:30 p.m. EDT on Zoom.