Eric, one of Teens from the Queens Museum after School program, came to Temple Gates this evening. Unfortunately, he misunderstood when I said to meet at 7 o'clock and came at 7 AM instead of 7PM. So he went to the museum quite early this morning. Then, this evening, he went to the wrong synagogue! I was terribly sorry about that. Quite honestly, I was like him when I was young, so, I totally understand that. However, it did pose a problem as he was having to run to the temple and we were told we had only 15 minutes to do the session! Oops! But actually it went super well, and ended up being more like a 30-minute session.
The Jewish temple's youth program, made up of kids around 10-12 years old, is absolutely active. Boys and girls are all together playing dodge ball and other games in a small concrete underground space. Screaming, screaming and screaming to me. I have a bit of a hearing problem, and my ear was totally malfunctioning.
Eric was just quiet.
We started the session, and I just gave him the floor and started videotaping them.
Half of boys just played around, joking so loudly. Two girls and one or two boys were very excitingly answering all of what they knew about their religion by pointing out the drawings. It is interesting. Some of the drawings seem like pretty secret symbols to me. But, other children were able to point out and comprehended what they were even though that was by their friends.
At the Muslim center, the educator explained how much each age group of children understands their own religion. Similarly to what she told me about the Muslim children, I guess Jewish children do not know so many alters, artifacts, or parts of objects. Since Eric was not interested in such things or else did not have the chance to ask them what each of them means, they did not discuss such artifacts so much. I was almost wanted to ask why and what it means for each of them out of my own curiosity. However, this time, I had set up this system so that I am not doing the questioning or answering, but am simply observing what is happening.
These are just my thoughts, however, I remembered that when I was little, I wrote out Buddhist Sutras without understanding them. I felt "cool" about it. Japanese Kanji characters were pretty difficult, therefore I felt cool and very adult-like. Anyhow, I think in most cases, we learn one religion in that way, without doubting or thinking about what's behind it until we are much older. Then maybe we make a conscious decision about it. My grandma sometimes told me later that you did not have to understand the sutras fully, but that you should just chant them. That was all you needed to go to heaven.
Probably that would be fine, and certainly much easier. But, then, we live in contemporary society where there is always a drive to figure out why we do what we do. In that case, unquestioned belief is difficult. In a good way, I think that is the beginning of the really interesting or insightful religious thought and philosophy. The Muslim center educator said that is probably around the beginning of Junior High when kids reach that level of thought about religion, but it is still tough.
Without knowing everything about it, we probably usually belong to some group - that much is not just unique to religion.
