No matter how much I plan, when faced with enacting that plan and living it, the abstract becomes real. I set my writing topics several weeks ago; this week my writing and I landed squarely in yamin noraim, the days of awe on the jewish calendar. The topic du jour was to anchor reflections with a bit of mishnah found in Pirkei Avot (2:16): ‘(Rabbi Tarfon would say), “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”‘

Wow, you may be thinking. That sounds like it has potential regardless of where you are in your life and it doesn’t matter if you’re jewish or not. This line is a known gem for a reason. However, that’s all the note I provided myself for the topic. Rereading it as I sat in earnest to draft the post, at first it didn’t sit well. What does it mean for me writing here? I started reading commentaries and they left me with more questions than answers, and questions don’t help draft these posts.

Part of me wants to be glib and write that it means you don’t have to swatch and you don’t have to weave in ends.

But that’s not who I am.

Ok, I don’t always swatch, even though I ask others to, and I rarely weave the ends of my own projects. But I think it actually reaches to something deeper. I’m going to geek out on jewish texts and quote my other favorite bit of Pirkei Avot (4:1) “Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? One who learns from every man”.

Taken together I read these as to have wisdom, you need to keep an open mind and learn from everyone. Personally, I can take this in two different ways. As I teach more, I learn all that I don’t know. I’ve been teaching and being paid to do so for over 30 years. Just because I’ve taught a topic successfully to student A doesn’t mean I can teach it in the same way to student B. I need to adapt and learn from everyone and that will shape how to teach. I recently attempted to teach a tubular cast-on to two students at the same time. It didn’t go well. On reflection I didn’t start the lesson off well at all. My goal is for success and joy when knitting. I began by saying “I think the way described in the pattern is too difficult and fussy, so I’m going to suggest you do it another way”. And then I taught — from memory — my preferred technique. To two different learners. It’s an easy one for me, and they struggled. It wasn’t until long into frustration (for all of us) that I realized I had further complicated matters because I swapped a key part of instruction when I mentally translated an “in the round pattern” to flat knitting. That meant an apology email that night with revised instructions. Which muddied the waters further because I didn’t pause. I simply jumped straight in.

To say these students weren’t having fun would be an understatement. I feel extreme guilt, that as teacher, I have personally caused this. Both with my initial words “I think a technique is difficult” and by botching the actual initial lesson. It’s been eating at me and I spend a good deal of Rosh Hashannah contemplating how I could be a better teacher in the small-group setting I have on Thursday afternoons.

This week, I’m rereading Judaism is about Love by Shai Held; I downloaded the audiobook from the library and I was reading it next to my paperback copy which I can keep by my side but not read actively from while knitting. When I last read chapter four, Learning to Love and Be Loved, I wasn’t teaching knitting or crochet often. What made me hit pause on both the book and my knitting on this reread was the following passage, found on page 93:

An oft-cited verse from the book of Proverbs teaches: “Train a child on the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6). The Hebrew has often been read to suggest on emphasis on the singular pronoun: “Train a child in the way the he should go,” or even, “Train a child in his own way.” The path that each individual must follow is unique to her. According to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), “The verse demands a totally individualized education.” The ideal of a life guided by Torah and God’s commandments is universal, he explains, but the paths that get each young person there are different. They depend on the child’s distinctive inclinations and capacities. As a result, R Hirsch observes, “no one educational approach is appropriate to each and every child.”.

We may be adult learners, but we are still someone’s child whether they are still here guiding us or not. I’m not going to stop my group knitting and crochet sessions. We find joy in the communal aspects of the group, but I’m going to work differently as I teach techniques. I might sit and teach the same technique to several people in a row, and I may start with a here’s what we’re aiming for shown to all 3, but each will have individual instruction.

Further, Held writes, on page 95, “To teach without first establishing a firm grounding in love, a contemporary Jewish educator (Moshe Odes) argues, is like pouring water from a pitcher with no cup to receive it.” And that stopped me. Adult learners are different from the elementary school aged music students I once taught. I know this, I try to be mindful of it, but to see it in print like that (and hear it in my ears), it’s a reminder I needed. To learn a new skill as an adult, no matter how open our mind, no matter how much we want to learn is a different process than when we learned a new skill as a child. However, we still need to have a firm ground — in both love and in fundamentals — so that we can receive new skills from a pitcher and not have them flow over and through us without comprehension.

My wish for us in this new year is that we never lose the desire to learn. My second wish is that we all find patience to build a foundation so that we can catch the knowledge we are given. Perhaps it’s found in a notebook. Or maybe it’s looking at and using different tutorials while working to gain understanding. It’s likely something altogether different. But it’s what you need it to be..

Shanah Tovah. G’mar Chatimah Tovah.