Walking in Another’s Shoes: A Reflection on Parshat Vaera
“The Torah tells us three times that the purpose of the signs and wonders was ‘so that the Egyptians may know that I am the L-rd.’” (Shemot 7:5; 14:4; 14:18)
Have you ever wondered why we honestly think we understand what someone is going through, only to realize when it happens to us that, not for lack of trying, we actually had no idea? Our best faith effort and compassion could only take us so far. Parshat Vaera highlights the difference between intellectual understanding, even if well-meaning, and the deep-seated empathy that develops from first-hand experience.
Pharaoh, despite witnessing the plagues and the devastation they wreaked upon his land, remains unmoved plague after plague. Intellectually, he rationalizes away each plague and refuses to accede to each increasingly painful demonstration of Hashem’s will. It isn’t until he loses his son, his firstborn, that Pharaoh’s eyes are opened, and he capitulates, releasing Bnai Yisrael from bondage.
The true, full-bodied understanding of Pharoah that we see after the tenth and final plague requires more than knowing from a distance. It demands the emotional connection that can only be acquired through personal experience. We see in the parsha, and know from our own lives, that only when we immerse ourselves in another’s reality, can we then gain a fuller understanding of the other’s challenges and needs.
The neuropsychological concept behind this phenomenon is embodied cognition, defined as whole-body understanding. Embodied cognition postulates that our thinking is shaped not only by logic and memory of past experiences, but also by our emotions and physical engagement of our body acting on and being acted upon by the environment. In education, we tap into embodied cognition when we design experiential learning opportunities, recognizing that engaging students’ closely linked sensory, motor, and emotional networks creates more durable and deeply rooted learning than learning acquired by intellect or rote memory alone. Now, I get it! I didn’t understand what you meant until it happened to me.
In this issue of Ohr Chadashot, you will see examples of learning through action, the way we believe education is most impactful. For example, our ECC students, for whom all learning is multimodal, made the most of our recent snowfall to practice the cognitive concepts of building, ordering objects by size, writing their names, and experimenting with painting snow. Our Elementary School students, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, explored ways in which we strive to create a community defined by middot and achdut. Throughout Hebrew Language week, our students learned about and celebrated the life of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, by creating an OCA Hebrew dictionary and a video of their favorite words, and having fun practicing Hebrew through activities located around the school.
In the Middle School, Rabbi Riselsheimer’s 7B Chumash class personally designed flags that represented each of the shvatim to deepen their understanding of the role and location of each shevat in the midbar. And in a festive and meaningful bat mitzvah celebration with their mothers and grandmothers, Morah Reischer’s 6th grade students presented their research of each of the Imahot, making direct connections between the middot of Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah, and the middot they desire to emulate for themselves.
These are just several examples of OCA’s approach to learning by doing, through which we build empathy, understanding, knowledge, and skills, while creating memories that we hope our students will remember for many years to come.
Shabbat shalom!