Rabbi Barnett Kiruv Training

thank you for volunteering to be a mentor in the Jane Spire uh Kusa program just want to give you a a short set of guidelines to help your Kusa go more smoothly some Asos uh to help you be more effective so the first thing you have to know as in all Cur of um activities the number one idea the number one uh point that we have to keep stressing again is it's all about relationship 95% of Outreach perus learning being a mentor to somebody is about relationships now it's interesting because theusa the learning which we often we understand that's the goal that's the job that really just provides AAS it provides you a set time to develop a relationship with somebody and to move them along in a care of process so that's how you have to look at it's a cavas you're they to establish the relationship so particularly in the beginning when you learn with somebody what you want to do is you want to shmoo with them you want to get to know them you want to make a connection to them and become a friend that's going to be the background the backdrop of of your learning with them so you want to take that time to start uh with shooing with with reconnecting always with connecting to them now some people particularly ladies are so great at shooing and so great at relationships that they forget to move to the learning it is a good idea to always try to Pivot at some point to sharing some learning with them to sharing some wisdom with them because you don't want it to be just about relationship about going out for coffee about having a new friend you wanted to have a new friend but you want to be able to move it in a Yiddish k um type of a way now sometimes people think you know U if you haven't done this before you're not used to cure of that you have to convince someone of your position when you learn with them or you have to argue or you have to be the defender of the Orthodox position you don't really have to do that at all you're not presenting yourself as a teacher you're not presenting yourself as an expert as a rabbi or a Ritson you you really are presenting yourself and should present yourself as someone who's sharing the learning process with you I might know more than you you might know a little less than me but we're going to learn together you'll learn what you don't know I'll learn I'll learn what I don't what I don't know you should also uh realize that often the mentor Kusa relationship will wax and Wayne a little bit um sometimes you'll be learning week in week out or every every two weeks every 3 weeks whatever the case might be and then you'll get busy or they'll get busy and it'll wait a little bit so it's important first of all for you not to be discouraged not for you to be disappointed not for you to think that they're not interested most of the time it's not that they're not interested it's just that they got busy just like you got busy then to go back to you know a point really I should have made at the outset it's it's probably a good idea for you to touch base with your Kusa weekly that should be your goal you should try to learn weekly um but at the very least touchbased weekly I'll tell you why because if you get in the habit of touching Bas and saying hi you know I know we can't learn this week but I just want to say hi and maybe here's an idea you might leave them with or you might give them a idea about Shabbat or something like that it makes it much easier to pick up the learning again with them when they're available or when you're available in other words if you haven't seen somebody or had any contact with somebody for for weeks on end it becomes a little awkward picking up the learning so you could text you could call you could email just make sure you keeping contact that's the idea just like you would in any normal relationship uh you would keep up you you would keep up the contact now to that extent you know sometimes what I what I always do whether I'm in a waning period or I'm just uh in a normal period of my Kusa is every once in a while I'll send a really good article or a video that I will see you know on h.com or other websites that I think would interest them now it's very important to not in in dat you know there are always people who send you uh it seems like they send you 15 emails a day and you never even open up the email anymore you don't want to be that stalker with your partner so I have a kind of a rule of thumb don't really send anything more than twice a month unless you know that they want to hear what you're sending them in other words if they love Israel or they're they're totally fix fixated on what's happening with Iran and Israel you know send them those kind of Articles send it to them or if they love history or if they love any particular thing that you can send them but if not try not to send them anything more than twice a month and never send it as a chain email that you're saying to a lot of different people always make it personal because again it's a way to move your relationship forward and it it just keeps a backdrop of yish kite a backdrop of ideas um now one one important thing is um if you do have disagreements with your kuso or they're just not you know at your level at this point from various observances try to validate them in other words for I give you an example if someone says their their daughter or their um their niece you know their sister's daughter just had this sort of trb Mitzvah in in Israel or whever it might be and you know it's not the way you would do it or I would do it just try to validate them to the extent of you know it's really amazing that many people today wouldn't even choose to have a bar mitzvah so many people don't even care it's amazing that you still care that you're able to do it now you didn't you didn't um validate or say the way they did it was great but you really validated them and their Jewish expression they don't you don't want to ever let them feel judged that's one of the things that kind of is in the back of their psychology that Orthodox people judge them so you want to be validating s similarly when they ask a question even if it's a challenging question or they make a statement you always try to validate to the extent you can boy you're really thinking that's really an important issue that's really a sensitive issue if they demonstrate good MOS you know they they particularly don't gossip or when uh or they're very good at kav aim Tre try to stress that and try to say to them you know that is an amazing you know uh character trait that you have and it's really something that's very much stressed in our tradition they'll feel like a million bucks feel very good about that another very important thing is don't let the Cur of that you're doing outpace the relationship the relationship is like the foundation of a building if you have an example a very small Foundation you can't put a huge first floor on that foundation so for example if someone would ask you a very challenging question something about homosexuality as an example something about women and Judaism something that you find very very challenging it's almost almost aggressive so at the right time with the right Rel relationship that you have with your partner there's almost no topic that cannot be addressed everything is on the table when you have a good relationship because it's not uh they don't take it personally if you have a very little relationship there's almost no sensitive topic that you can talk about so it's very important always keep putting into the relationship keep putting into the relationship and then you can um in a commensurate way move along the cir for example at some point you could ask your Kusa if they'd like to spend the Shabbat at your house a whole Shabbat now if you did that right off the bat that would probably be outpacing the relationship but if you did at the appropriate time it would be a natural extension of the relationship um and another way to deal with some controversial issues or questions that you don't think they're ready to deal with is push them off I always do this now one of the ways to push it off very nicely is just saying you know that's a very important Point very valid question you have you know and again validate the question or the idea but say you know that has got to you have to develop a context you have to know more about Judaism about Jewish philosophy to really put this piece in the puzzle in it's a very important piece like in an example sadic varala rushab vovo that's a very important philosophical question that many people are bothered by but you kind of need to know who's God how does God run the world what is the purpose of man to be able to really understand that properly it can't be taken out of context so that's one way to push off I also push off with humor all the time I'll give you an example someone will ask me you know a lady will ask me a question typical question you know Rabbi how come women are second class citizens in Judaism and I always make a bit of a joke and I say you know I'll i' be happy to answer your question but but why you asking me I'm part of the I'm on the opposite team I'm one of the oppressors you that's what I tell them they laugh you know but I but but what it does is it sort of once you make a joke and once you you throw it off it sort of you you reduce the challenge I know rev nor Weinberg Z he used to always say when someone ask a question he wanted to know if they were serious he would say ah you'll think the answer is crazy and when they were persist three times and saying no I really want to know similar to what you do with a gar you push them away three times he'd finally say okay you want to hear he'd tell them the answer and they would say Rabbi that was the craziest thing I ever heard he said I told you so that's what you would say but again it disarms him totally and what it does is it qualifies the question when it's it's really a question because often sometimes throw out questions they just uh they're not really bothered by something or they want to push you off particularly when I hear men talk about women's issues I'm like they don't really care about women's issues I know it's a push off n out of 10 times the Holocaust question how could God do that that's a push off as well so you have to know when to answer a question and when not to when not to ask a question and when the appropriate time is to ask a question now the the other thing that's very important is when you don't know the answer to a question the best answer is I don't know and it's very underutilized but again as we said before if you don't hold yourself as an expert or a rabbi or a Ritson or someone that you know is quote unquote the Orthodox Authority then you should be more comfortable saying I don't know and I don't know is a tremendous validation of the other person when they hear I don't know and you you follow it up with well that was a great question and sometimes you'll even say you know that's something that I've done by wrote my whole life and I really should know that I'm almost embarrassed I don't know that they feel tremendous then you could say and we'll find out about that together that's a great question that I should have asked a long time ago and we'll find it out or it's could be also a very good opportunity to connect them with a rabbi connect them to an article connect them to a person that really can answer that question and if it was a rabbi or a Ritson or someone in the community that's a whole another uh uh Aid in the Cure of process that you've then you know grafted on to your tree so that's that's a very very best answer is I don't know now one thing I would recommend this is totally up to you it won't make it won't necessarily make you less effective Kusa is that you really can always work on your knowledge base your cure of knowledge base you know if you were to to look um through the book uh the H h.com book cure of primer it's called the eye of the needle it's a fell time book fantastic it'll go through almost any issue that a new B Chua will have women's issue issues of Torah and science proofs of God proofs of Torah how to approach Kim like Kash and so on and so forth It's a tremendous book if you just want to get a basic overview it's because you're a little unsure of some of the questions that they might ask also to go on h.com and to peruse that website say reading an article or two a week they ask the rabbi section is also fantastic to build up your C of knowledge database also the the as the rabbi um you know uh site is also phenomenal and there's another website simple to remember which is also quite good so this is something you can do to um you know increase your knowledge and increase your efficacy in your Kusa learning I just want to mention as well if you go on tangents in your learning and you talk about personal issues and different things don't think you're not doing the assignment this is particularly for the men out there that are listening to this men think if think that if you have a job and your job is to learn if you straight from the learning it did something wrong it didn't follow directions that's not true because in this uh Endeavor in this relationship building that we're after the tangents are often the most important things that will move them along in a cure of context and I think you'll find as you learn with people some of the best sessions were those sessions when you went off the track and you didn't you didn't necessarily get to the learning you were interested in or perhaps sometimes you didn't even get to the learning at all you can kind of show them Judaism in real life in real action now um what you should also do as as as you can is to extent possible is look for other opportunities to get them involved in yishai beyond your learning remember the learning is getas but you want to be thinking what's the next experience my partner needs should I bring them um to a Sim I one of my Simas should I get them for shabas Friday night should I get them for the entire shabas should I bring them to a perm suit what can I do with simplest Torah what's what's the ne should I suggest a trip to Israel what's the next experience I can get my partner uh to be doing you also want to want to um think about the wider cure of situation what about the husband what about the wife what about the children because you're going to T typically the Kus the mentor is a point person to a whole family so to the extent you can it'd be great if you can get your husband or your wife to perhaps come in and help you with the kir of with their spouse or for example example they have children that are teenagers what's ncsy doing in your area are there any other resources that you could be a sh and hook up her significant others in her life um as well one other very good thing is to know if the kids are in college who is the campus marar is there a good person is there a moreor person on campus I just had the Good Fortune I've been working with a good friend of mine for 20 years and his daughter just went off to University of Maryland I happen to know there's a great K fellow from a rabbi from a on that campus I made the sh it's been tremendous how she's grown and how my friends family has grown so think about the uh other people in the family that you can help move along now another thing is you know at some point it goes beyond relationship you do want to try to help them not only have more great Jewish uh experiences but you also like to help them increase their observance and again if you have a very strong relationship it's no problem asking people um about mitah observance the way I do it I think I have a very good mahalik in this is that you say have you ever thought of dot dot dot have you ever thought of keeping kosher have you ever thought or considered about sending your your child to Day School you're you're posing it as a discussion amongst two friends you're giving them credit for their SE for their their knowledge for them being a mature person who has and they they take it that way it's a discussion and often they'll say you know I did consider once a long time ago keeping kosher but you know now I'm considering it even more strongly and you have a wonderful discussion now if they decide to take on the Mitzvah great if they don't take on the Mitzvah it will not hurt your relationship at all it really will strengthen it if it's if it comes from this uh this kind of approach have you ever considered the ball's in your court I'm not telling you to do anything we're just having a discussion about it I'll give you another idea that I use typically Russ shayam Kipper but it's uh good for the whole year round it's based on the Mahar um commentary in the mavos that the world stands on three things Torah aod and he says that represents three different relationships in the world Torah is your relationship to yourself aod prayer is your relationship to God and the third relationship is is your relationship to your fellow man and I say to them just like a stool needs three legs to be able to stand so to human being to be holistic to to be a full holistic Jew you need both all three of these legs Define um so I say we should always have something in that we're doing some way we're reaching out to other people we should always have something that we're doing in our relationship to God whether it's the Sha whether it's prayer whether it's fill in Maza something expressing our connection to God and we should also be learning Torah that's that's related to myself and my growth my character development I finally think is a tremendous thing this it takes it from being overwhelming the 613 to be saying I should be doing three Mitzvah always working on three areas of growth uh Torah a and I just find this is a very nice way of helping them along in Mitzvah observance the other thing that we just want to mention particularly now I'm happen to be uh giving this year um right on the cus of Hanukah starting tonight every um holiday provides a tremendous cure opportunity Hanukah is one of those great great holidays that also has this idea of giving a gift which is American culture in the guil but we can use it to our advantage as well you can get them a very nice little book a Jewish matters it's in the it's in the air a season of giving so to give them a gift to give them a book Russ AA time to give them honey to give them an easy Outreach gift that project Inspire is always um bringing to the market um this is a tremendous opportunity to have them over over your home for a MBA where you're candle lighting to bring them over to your home on soot for a um for a meal in the these are great opportunities that we have you know every few months to have to to bring someone into your home and have an enhanced care of experience um so this is just a short overview of um of uh Kusa relationship a mentor relationship um also just one one other idea about what to learn now we have we have a curriculum called The Higher Ground uh Jewish life curriculum which is uh a taus Kim curriculum dealing with pleasure and love and relationship self-esteem you're welcome to use that and we have that posted on our website jar. but also if you don't often what what uh appeals to people is kind of what you're interested in they say that words that come from the heart into the heart so you're passionate about and you're interested in and what you feel you can kind of give over and feel comfortable with typically your partner will like that as well I just I find that many people don't really have uh such an answer to what do you want to learn and it's really so much about the relationship but we do also at uh at project Inspire have a list of books that we can give you if you want to learn about prayer you want to learn about any other topic we can give you that list and always you know I find peros and Kish are two very good tried andr areas to to to learning from which you can use the jump off points to go in any any which way any direction you want so if you need any more information please get in touch with me RA Sim Barnett at sarett Pro Inspire uh.com and we'll be happy to help you further with any more specific questions turn it off