Purposes, Ethics
Chicago Morasha

Rabbi Maralee Gordon

What Rabbi Maralee Gordon likes best about her job is the thoughtful responses and questions of the students that deepens the learning so much. When she was asked to teach in the Mini-School she jumped at the chance and this is now her second year. "I am on my first set of second-year students, and I see that they have gotten better about not reading into the text," says Maralee. "I see them being more confident in their own learning and knowledge, and eager to put their learning into practice in their own classrooms, as most of them teach in synagogue religious schools. I also see growth in their faith development."

Maralee enjoys the curriculum at the Mini-School which she says is so well thought out. "Teaching a new lesson is a learning experience for me," she says. "In the classroom it is gratifying to interact with serious students and the text. The questions and comments of each participant add so much to everyone's learning, including of course my own."

Maralee has an undergraduate degree in Judaic studies and a masters degree in Jewish Studies from the University of Chicago. She also holds a semicha from the Academy for Jewish Religion, a non-denominational rabbinical/cantorial seminary that is geared toward returning adult learners. Seven years ago, she began studies to become a rabbi. "Returning to school at the age of 48 was an incredible experience," she says. " I was very aware of how I learned in a different manner than when I was originally in college, not to mention that there was no studying all night this time! It proved to be good preparation for teaching in the Mini-School program."

Maralee directed the Bar/Bat Mitzvah program at a large synagogue-teaching, tutoring, family Bar/Bat Mitzva education, adult Bar/Bat mitzvah-, ran a social action resource center for Chicago-area synagogues for several years, and was a Religious School principal. She is also the rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in DeKalb, IL, where she teaches children and adults of all ages, in addition to teaching at two Chicago BJE Melton Adult Mini-School sites.

Due to her recent intensive experience as an adult learner (in rabbinical school) she was very aware of the need to employ multiple strategies to get learning to stick. "If I didn't take notes, I lost a lot of what I was reading or hearing," she says. "So, besides wanting to hear participants voice the main ideas, and my own summarizing of those ideas, I started designing my roadmaps to encourage participants to write down the main ideas of what we are learning." She finds she is more patient in waiting for students to respond to questions, and asks more open-ended questions. She says she is better about bringing in related texts to what they are studying.

She often uses a chart with questions that can be applied to multiple texts in the particular lesson. Before she starts the part of the lesson in which it will be used, she informs participants of the issues and/or questions that they will be looking at in the texts.

"Rabbi Gordon brings her strong background in Jewish education and her appreciation for adult learning to our Melton classes for educators," says Judy Kupchan, Chicago Morasha Mini-School Director and Director of Teacher Education at the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School. "She is a wonderful teacher and a great role model for educators of someone who takes Jewish studies very seriously. She has become famous for her roadmaps as "graphic organizers" lending clarity and challenge to her teaching of Purposes and Ethics."

Maralee became involved in adult Jewish education when she ran the Bar/Bat Mitzvah training program at a large congregation, and there was a group of adults, mostly women, who had never had the opportunity to learn "synagogue skills" when they were growing up. As the principal of a school, she also became aware of the large percentage of parents who hadn't had the opportunity to study in a Jewish setting beyond their early teens, and began holding short-term courses or workshops for them.

Maralee has noticed two challenges in teaching at the Mini-School. One is gearing a lesson so that it will challenge students with stronger Jewish backgrounds while not losing those with less Jewish learning. And now that she is teaching a course, Purposes, for the second time, she feels that things don't work the same as they did the first time. "I have to remember to rework my lessons to meet the needs of this new group of students. Then there is always the challenge of teaching most, if not all of the lesson in the allotted hour, when there is enough discussion and interest to take up twice that time!"

One of her best moments in the Mini-School was just a couple of weeks ago. There was the moment in Ethics when they were looking at a rabbinic text quoting a snippet from Bereishit, and several students commented that that wasn't what they saw in the biblical text-they had already turned to it in the Tanach to look at it in context. Advice Maralee would give to other teachers is: Use the Mini-School experience for your own learning and growth. Teach to the strengths of your students, not their weaknesses.

Back row left-to-right: sons Ben and Jacob, husband Leo, and son Ari. Front row: Maralee and daughter-in-law Michal

Maralee and her husband are both life-long Chicago-area residents. They left the city for Woodstock, a small town, 55 miles northwest of Chicago, when Ben was a baby. Because there is only one synagogue in the county, they found a tight-knit, welcoming Jewish community there. She is the grandmother of Binyamin, a sabra, son of her middle son, Jacob, and his wife Michal, who made aliya when they got married. Their oldest son, Ari, lives in San Francisco where he has a job in hi-tech.

Maralee met her husband, Leo Schlosberg, when they were in their mid-twenties in a chavura in Chicago. Most participants in the chavura were single at the time, and they've been dancing at the weddings of children of those members for a couple of years now. In her spare time, she likes walking with friends, particularly on hilly roads, gardening, both flowers and vegetables, and she recently took up knitting again after many years and is currently knitting a sweater for her first grandchild.

Rabbi Maralee Gordon can be reached by e-mail at hamsa@mc.net

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