The following essay about family values was written by Lucy Zener, a middle schooler, enrolled in City Congregation’s B’Mitzvah program. Students spend a year and a half researching their heritage, values and beliefs, and write on a Jewish subject of their choice, their major project. The process improves both the student’s writing and critical thinking skills, as well as his/her self confidence and overall maturity.
Something every family has in common are values. Every family has them, even if they don’t realize it. For my Bat Mitzvah, I had to research my family’s values by interviewing family members.
Before I start, though, you might want to know who I interviewed. First, I interviewed my dad, then my great aunt Jill. Then I got a package in the mail from my aunt Michelle. It was a few CDs of an interview from 1981 with my great-great-grandfather Sam. After I listened to that, I interviewed my grandma J, Sue-Ellen, then my mom. Finally, I interviewed my grandparents Z, Thelma and Bob.
It’s not surprising that education is such an important value in my life. All of the family members I interviewed, all seven of them (plus great grandpa Z!) either held or hold this value. And feminism? 75%. Critical thinking has been hammered into my brain by half of my interviewees, including both of my parents. Community is a value to seven-eighths of my respondents. Humor is important, again, to half of my family members. Those values are all important to me.
My first value is education, chee-nuch. Everyone I interviewed has this value. And under the umbrella of this value are reading and scientific curiosity. Education is extremely important to me and my family. My Grandma on my dad’s side, Grandma Z, has a PHD in Psychology. My Great Aunt Jill and my Grandpa on my dad’s side (Grandpa Z) have law degrees from the University of Chicago. My Aunt Michelle has an MD from UCSF. Both of my parents went to Wesleyan, where my dad got his bachelor’s in both biology and theater. My mom has a Master’s in Social Work from NYU. Her mom, Grandma J, got a Masters in Education from Teachers College. My Uncle George has two Masters degrees in Engineering, one from Stanford and the other from The Ohio State University. My Great Great Grandpa Sam never got a good education, but valued it just the same. My Grandpa J, on my Mom’s side, had a JD from Albany Law School. His mom, Great Grandma Lee, worked during the Depression but went back to college and graduated with a bachelor’s at age 70. So education is very important to my family, and with that many people close to me valuing education, you can see how much it would rub off on me.
I also think I have the value of education because of two more reasons. My parents have always supported me in school, even now. When I need help with a math problem, my dad helps me work it out. Both of them work tirelessly to get the Department of Education to pay for me to go to my school. Finally, my teachers have supported me and helped me, even though I learn differently than most kids. Another reason why I have the value of education is that I love learning.
I consider education one of my most valued values. I love teaching people and consider myself great with little kids. That’s probably why I want to be a teacher. Education is a value I hold strongly and believe everyone deserves a good education. I think this because everyone is equal and therefore should get a good education, not just if they have money, or have geographic access to good schools. Some people’s circumstances might prevent them from getting a good education. This is not their fault, so why can’t they have a chance to be comfortable in life, knowing they have a good education and therefore be successful?
Something that is like education is scientific curiosity. My great grandfather was Clarence Zener, writer of the papers that led to the invention of the Zener Diode. Now, if you’re not an electronics fanatic, you probably don’t know what that is. It’s a semiconductor diode that enables a current to switch direction at a crucial moment. It’s in most electronics.
My next value is critical thinking, cha-shee-vah bee-kor-tee. Right now, in the age of “alternative facts”, it’s hard to figure out what is fact and what is fiction. If no one had critical thinking skills, people would be lost, believing obvious lies. But even before fake facts were so widespread, I still had this value. Most people just think that what teachers say is the truth, but with critical thinking skills that isn’t always the case. In pre-school, I had a teacher who said Pteranodon wasn’t spelled with a “p” at the beginning. I told her it had a “p”, but she wouldn’t listen. Eventually, my parents told me that I was right, but to leave it be.
Critical thinking is important in the world right now because there are no filters on things like social media. For an obvious example of this, look at Plandemic. It’s pretty obviously false. But without critical thinking, I might think this pandemic was planned. That’s super bad – people probably have died because they believed this. Some may have gone to a party without a mask, got COVID and died.
Moving on from that dark note, my grandpa Z was a lawyer, as well as other things. As a lawyer, he had to think of all sides of a question. Critical thinking was required to anticipate what the other person was going to say, instead of just “I’m right and you’re wrong.” He passed that skill down to my dad, who passed it to me.
Another value I hold is community, k’hee-la. Community is what ties people together. It’s important because, who knows, you might just need help from a community. Also, that way you can connect to people and not be a familiar stranger. My parents also hold that value, but not as strongly as their parents and great grandparents. Only one person of the eight people I interviewed doesn’t hold community as a value. Also, community is very important on my floor of my apartment building. Everybody knows everybody, even the dogs know each other. My neighborhood is more tight-knit than most New York City neighborhoods. I guess all of those things helped me have this value. A value I hold that I feel falls into this category is community service, tikkun olam. My grandparents and my great great grandparents were big on community service. I also help my community a lot.
My great great grandpa Sam’s father-in-law and mother-in-law were well known in their community for making newcomers feel welcome. Sam’s mother-in-law was called Sara Gutte, which means Sara the good. In the community, Sara was very active. She raised a ton of money for her community in Rochester, New York. She founded the Jewish nursing home there. She was a social worker, like my mom. She made Purim baskets to hand out. Grandma Z has also always been active in her community. She worked in hospices. Her mother volunteered at PTA events.
My next value is feminism, fe-mi-nizm. This is one of the values that shapes my everyday life. Only 75% of the interviewees hold this value, but my parents both do. They raised me to believe that everyone is equal, and it’s the inside of people that counts. My great aunt Jill was one of 10 women in her junior year at Lafayette College. She had the highest GPA of her class. When I interviewed her, she said, “They were all men, so it wasn’t hard.” After college, she went to University of Chicago Law School. There were only a few women students, and no women on the faculty. A group of women filed a complaint, and delayed some federal funding. She wound up with a job at a law firm in Chicago. Although Jill was the first woman partner, or maybe because of that, she always had to prove herself. She said: “I had the advantage of being able to compete in a man’s world and succeed, but eventually I had enough of always having to prove myself and succeed.” After that, she went into volunteering for her community.
Grandpa J was also a feminist. Grandpa J changed the wording of the documents he wrote in his law practice. For example, he addressed letters “Dear Gentle People”, not “Dear Gentlemen”. His expectations for his children weren’t gendered. When we were talking to the Rabbi for Grandpa J’s funeral, we made sure to strongly convey how important it was that the Rabbi use non-gendered words.
My last value is humor, hu-mor. Half of the people I interviewed hold this value. One summer, I went on a cruise with some of my family. And we had a pun war. About boats. Mom and Aunt Michelle’s texting stream is full of pun wars. During Grandpa J’s funeral, there was a lot of laughter. Humor is a very important coping mechanism. In a tense situation, cracking a joke can lighten the mood. And there were a lot of tense situations when my mom was growing up. We use sarcasm every day in my family. My great-grandpa Harold made puns all the time. For example: “You’ve got a point there. If you put on a hat, no one would notice.” “I’m hungry.’ ‘Hi, hungry, I’m Harold.’”
Did anything surprise me while I was writing my paper? I honestly don’t think so. I already knew that my family held these values. But it was fun to see why we hold these values. For example: I had no idea my great-grandma Lee got a degree at age 70. Or that some of my family members even existed. But it was also fun to know what my family’s values are – for example six people hold perseverance as a value. At the time of writing this (in sixth grade), I’d never dream of holding that as a value, mostly because whenever another story I want to write pops into my mind, I write about that instead of finishing my current story. My values will change as I grow older, though, and so I have no idea what values I’ll hold at age 40. I’ll just have to wait and see.
