by Liz Fisher

Liz Fisher studies with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg

As parents of school age kids, we’ve mostly made the shift from being woken up to waking the kids up. But waking the kids up each morning is only part of the job. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that the four most common words I say every morning are “put your shoes on”. My kids aren’t so hard to wake up, and they pretty much get through the eating breakfast, brushing teeth routine on their own, but the shoes? Every single morning. “Put. Your. Shoes. On”. Over and over and over again.

This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, and there is a cool campaign amongst a group of rabbis and others to get the #Torah hashtag to the top of the most popular list. So there has been a lot of tweeting Torah today, and I am enjoying the 140 character at a time learning.

This morning, Rabbi Sari Laufer (@RabbiLaufer) tweeted: “Midrash: The night before receiving the #Torah, the children of Israel slept all of that night,& Moshe had to rouse them to receive #Torah.”

I’ve been thinking about that rousing, what it meant at Sinai and what it means in our generation. Yesterday I had the extraordinary privilege of learning with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg. At one point, he was asked about the generation gap. His response: for hundreds of generations, from Sinai to today, parents have had to teach their children that this (Torah, community, Judaism) is relevant and meaningful.

For hundreds of generations, we have had to wake our kids up. Yesterday’s learning was part of a conversation convened by the Schusterman Philanthropic Network, The Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, and our team at NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation. We were there to hear from Birthrighters themselves and their peers – innovators and entrepreneurs throughout the Jewish community who are helping us think about how to think about Birthright, the gift of a free 10 day trip to Israel, and the days, months, and years that follow that trip.

In many ways, for many participants, Birthright Israel is that waking up, the rousing to receive Torah – in the most broad sense of the word. And it does a pretty good job of that.

But Birthright Israel doesn’t make breakfast. It doesn’t remind you to pack your backpack. It doesn’t nag you to put on your shoes. And it doesn’t do what is my ultimate goal with my kids – get you to the point where you do all these things on your own because it just makes sense to you.

That job – the backpacks, the shoes, the understanding of relevance and applicability, that’s up to the rest of us. I’m honored to work with a group of people who think about this everyday. But we can’t think of it alone. Whatever your background, whatever your religion (or lack thereof), it is our role to pass our values on to the next generation. How are we doing that? And what are they passing up to us? And how do we all get to a place where we don’t need to be reminded to put our shoes on?

Liz Fisher is the Managing Director for NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation. Find her on twitter at @Liz_Fisher. The photo of Liz and Rabbi Yitz Greenberg was taken by @TheChaviva.