Lesson Overviews -

Student Lessons

Session 1: Be a Man (Who Reveres God) and Act Like a Lady (of Valor)
This session is designed to help students decipher the messages they are getting about gender roles and definitions of masculinity and femininity. It also touches briefly upon how stereotypical definitions of gender can contribute to homophobia. The message that “Judaism is countercultural” is presented as a helpful way of thinking as young adults learn to interpret the messages they are getting from society at large and the media in particular. Judaism can offer a sort of antidote to popular messages. Here, students will learn about Jewish definitions of admirable men and women and contrast them with portrayals in the contemporary media.

Session 2: I Think I Lust You
This session expands upon the exercise that students began in the first lesson related to learning how to filter messages about sexuality and gender from popular culture and the media. Here they will focus on filtering messages about love as they differentiate it from lust. This session looks at biblical texts and Martin Buber’s I-Thou theory of relationships for guidance about the qualities that make up a loving sexual relationship and with a critical eye towards their presentation of “ideal” relationships.

Session 3: Wrap an Eruv Around My Heart
This session is the third one in the series, sessions 1-4, focusing on messages presented by the general culture and the Jewish messages that challenge them. In the subsequent sessions, 5-7, the focus will be more on ethical relationships and sexual choices.

Today’s teens choose to publicize their lives in many ways. Specifically, however, anyone can have access to their profiles, journal entries and photos on a variety of Internet sites. The Jewish value of tzni’ut, modesty, offers an alternative way of thinking. By considering what it means to be modest, teens will be encouraged to think differently about what they keep private and what they display to the public. In this session, the value of privacy is the focus.

Session 4: Who am I? Sexual Orientation
This lesson explores our Jewish obligation to treat all individuals as children of God. It presents the Reform movement’s position on homosexuality and offers the opportunity for the participants to learn about the experience of being a homosexual or heterosexual Jewish teen in North America. This lesson will convey to the participants that no matter what their individual sexual orientation, they have inherent worth, and that the experience of adolescence for homosexual and heterosexual teens has similarities and differences that we can benefit from understanding.

Session 5: R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Having spent the first four sessions dissecting messages from our society and considering Jewish values in contrast to those messages, the next three sessions will focus more on ethical behaviors within the context of intimate relationships.

This session addresses questions, rights and responsibilities within a relationship, and how they are essential to the creation of a healthy dynamic between two individuals. Participants will explore the Jewish value of kavod, respect, as a core element in a healthy relationship and a central component to one’s responsibility to another. Participants will also examine how kavod relates both to being in a relationship as well as ending one.

Session 6: Let’s Talk About Sex
In this session, through an exploration of a continuum of ethical sexual relationships as originated by Rabbi Dr. Eugene Borowitz, we have a more graphic discussion of sexual behavior and sexual choices than in other sessions. Included in this session is a discussion of the range of expressions of sexuality, intimacy and ethics. This session asks the participants to place some hypothetical cases on a continuum and consider their own behavior in light of that continuum.

Session 7: Oops, I Did It Again
As we conclude the unit, we hope that students have learned about how Judaism can guide them in this important area of their lives and decision making. We also hope to have helped students fine-tune their own instincts about what is right for them. We know that most people learn the sessions about making the right decisions in relationships through trial and error. These sessions are designed to teach students that they can turn to Jewish tradition and the people in their Jewish community for help in making these decisions. In this final session, we explore the value of t’shuvah and teach that we always have the power to learn from our mistakes, change our behaviors, and move on.

Parent Session: Helping My Child Navigate
This session invites parents of high school aged students to consider the concept of a Jewish sex ethic and how they might discuss the subject with their children. Rather than focusing on the psychology or growth development of the teenage years, this session offers a general understanding of Jewish viewpoints on sexuality and provides parents a framework for conducting conversations about sex with their teens.