In All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes, Maya Angelou writes: “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place we can go as we are, and not be questioned.” The ache that Angelou describes is something that I believe is at the core of all human experiences. Call that “ache” what you want: acceptance, belonging, feeling valued, respected, being seen for your contributions. It is a feeling that is borne out of relationships where individuals feel seen and valued and in turn learn to value and see others. As we start a new cycle of reading the Torah, one of the first stories we encounter is one of the most perplexing. It describes what happens when one of the first human beings experiences the opposite of the ache that Angelou describes.

The story of Cain and Abel is, in my opinion, one of the most tragic stories in our tradition. It is the first story of violence and more than that, the story describes a murder committed by one brother against another. The story begins with an account of both brothers offering a sacrifice to God and we are told that only one of the offerings was accepted.

Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller of the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the first fruit of the soil, and Abel, for his part, brought the choicest of the firstlings of his flock. The Lord paid heed to Abel and his offering, but to Cain and his offering He paid no heed. Cain was much distressed and his face fell.

For years, I have tried to understand how Cain felt when his offering was not accepted. The rejection he experienced, and what moved him so deeply and bodily to commit the first murder. I recently reread Moshe Halbertal’s essay on sacrifice where he describes what Cain must have felt and what moved him to commit this first act of human violence. In describing Cain, Halbertal writes;

Forced barrenness stands at the source of violence. The exclusion of a person from the cycle of giving is a thorough humiliation. It diminishes him from the effectiveness of giving and weight of contributing. Assigning a person exclusively to the receiving end dooms him to passive receptivity and dependency, depriving him of the expression of love.

Returning to Angelou’s words, there is a question of what home looks like for us. Is home a place where we only receive? Or is it a place that requires us to contribute in order to feel like we belong? What really makes us feel like we are at home?

Walking around from classroom to classroom it is clear that students feel most comfortable and fulfilled when they contribute to a classroom culture. Students who are exclusively assigned to the receiving end of the learning process inevitably lose interest and their enthusiasm wanes. Students who are able to teach their peers, who are able to co-present content with their teachers, and who develop new insights into lessons, feel a sense of belonging and attachment to their classrooms.

Great teachers help their students experience a sense of ownership over the classroom culture. They understand that the student developing their own skills and aptitudes is not the only meaningful outcome of a classroom experience. Indeed, when I look around at our school and I see the ways in which students organize initiatives, encourage their teachers to take on new routines, take ownership over celebrating life cycle events like birthdays in a grade, I know that students feel a sense of belonging and know that their gifts are received and appreciated.

In partnership,
Adam Eilath