To start off, this week during the third hour we discussed Jonah and started work on creating fables using the Jonah story as our base. One of the reasons for bringing up Jonah is that coming up this Wednesday is Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur we pray, contemplate the year behind us and think about how we can work towards an even better year than the one before. We also read the story of Jonah.
The Story of Jonah brings up many different questions, about the main character, why God chooses this character to act in a way which seems contrary to what he typically does, and does Jonah truly regret or give a true answer to himself. With this in mind, I wanted the students to see if they could come up with a story which caused people to ask questions about the main character. The other reason I wanted to have them think about it was to see if any of them made the connection between the story of Jonah and Yom Kippur.
In the Great Debates in Judaism this week, we debated the current justice system in the United States. The week before we spoke about Abraham's courage in speaking to God about sparring Sodom if there were even Ten innocent people living there. In the same vein, the class continued the discussion. The question posed the week before was if collective punishment was ever a useful proposition. This week the question was if Judgement and Compassion could be balanced in the United State penal system.
Before the debate about punishment versus restorative practices we learned what those two terms meant. After all it's important that the students understand what they were debating. In the text book we read about how advocates for restorative practices speak about how this creates more opportunities for the victim and the criminal. We also read about how those who are punished for what they do, tend to fall in the problems as before when they leave the penal system.
Once the kids were assigned a side we debated to see who could come up with a better argument. Ultimately the debate came down to a draw, although in one class, the restorative practices side won on a technicality. The reason for the draw was that the sides ended up agreeing that if both penalties and restorative practices were used, the United States justice system might better serve the populace. Balance was the key word.
Coming up next week, we start talking about Moses and Korach.
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