Shortly before everything in the world changed nearly 2 years ago, Zoe and I went, though not together, to see the latest production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat.
This has been one of my favourite musicals for many years, and it’s impossible to read through the Joseph cycle in the torah without hearing the catchy tunes of Lloyd Webber’s retelling of the story. I feel particularly blessed to have seen my childhood hero – who can be seen on our image of the week – Jason Donovan, appear in the early 1990’s as Joseph, and again in 2019, and this last summer as Pharoah. My children are endlessly amused by my teen like excitement when my beloved Jason appears on the stage, having grown with me from hero of the story to elder statesman.
But there has been another fascinating kind of growth in the West End productions of Joseph. In the 1990’s, whether starring Jason Donovan or Philip Schofield, the production featured an enormous choir of children. They took their part singing the aaahaaaah’s in any dream will do, and a few other bits here and there, but that was more or less it for those young people (of whom I was deeply jealous that they were so close to Jason on a regular basis).
But in the latest production which Zoe and I saw, the role of the children had transformed. There was no longer a huge children’s choir, but 7 or 8 young performers who took the role of the chorus alongside many of the adult actors, but also took on much more significant roles. They were the Ishmaelites, driving camels built out of bicycles, and one of them was Potiphar himself. A pair played the Butler and the Baker in prison, and a handful took on roles as the younger end of Joseph’s brothers.
The first time I saw the production, I started a note in my phone about how striking the roles of the young people had been. Obviously a 12 year old wasn’t Potiphar, but it had been fun, funny, and effective. The second time I saw it that note began to formulate into this sermon. The empowerment of the children on stage added so much to the production, and I’m sure to their experience of it too. They were a valued part of the team, not just a spectacle to be wheeled out for a couple of spots in the show.
Similarly, our B’nei mitzvah pupils like our brilliant Zoe, are not on this bimah in order to shine brightly for a few minutes and perform, but are here as an integral part of the community as a whole, leading us all in prayer and torah learning, and helping us to fulfil the mitzvah of doing so.
But Bar and Bat Mitzvah pupils, on the whole, don’t begin their Jewish learning a few months before they will lead us from the Bimah. Many, like Zoe, will have grown up in the community. My hope, is that they don’t just feel like a shining star for one day on the stage as part of a much bigger machine, but that they each know there is a role that they can take up within the community, that their presence in the community enriches it and strengthens it, and that we deeply value their contribution.
Just as the young actors in Joseph confidently took up their parts on the stage to create a whole that was enhanced by them but impossible to achieve alone, we want our young people, our teens, and of course all our adults, to feel at home in synagogue, and to feel that there is something vital they can contribute to it.
In Proverbs 22:6, we are told chanoch l’na’ar, al pi darko, gam ki yazkin, lo yasoor mimenah. This is usually translated as something like ‘teach a youth according to their way, and they will not depart from it in their old age’. But the first word here – chanoch – shares a root with the word for the festival we are currently celebrating – Chanukah. It comes from a meaning connected to dedication. When I was the Educational student field worker for Reform Judaism, working with universities up and down the UK, my title was ‘Chinuch Fieldworker’. Yes it is about educating, but it really means to do so in a way that dedicates the student to what they are learning. Learning and knowing things is only a tiny part of life, imbibing and living them so that they add meaning and depth is the real challenge of living fully. According to Proverbs, this is done by teaching students ‘according to their way’ – adapting to who each of them is, and finding ways to do it that connect to their ways of learning and being. And by allowing young people and adults to really engage with what it means to be an integral part of something, perhaps we stand a better chance of creating dedication as well as knowing.
So in this great musical that is life, I hope we can all be empowered to find the roles that really bring us joy, dedication, and empowerment, and that in doing so, we will be able to live our lives more fully, and to continue a community that has in every generation found that which we must dedicate ourselves to in order to bring meaning, comfort and joy. Shabbat Shalom!
