Wearing Black

Rabbi Chanina taught, “I have learned much from my teachers. I have learned more from my colleagues than my teachers. But I have learned more from my students than from all of them.” (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit, 7a)

Confession time—I’ve never really loved that quote. Or, to be a bit more precise, I’ve had to do some (typically rabbinic) mental gymnastics to make it work. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I love the idea of learning from my students. But, mostly for me, that’s meant learning because I’ve had to prepare well to teach, or because they’ve pushed me to think more carefully. There aren’t many times when a student has, in a direct way, taught me something.

Today, we were talking about death and dying with our 5th grade class (students and parents together). As part of it, the kids wrote down all of the questions that they could think of. Then, I had each kid pick one of their questions, and then each student had to try to answer it with their parents. The idea was to show that, especially on this topic, wondering out loud together is at least as important (and at least as accurate) as listening to a so-called expert.

One of the kids asked an unusual question (“unusual” in that I’ve run this program a dozen times, and never heard this one before). “Why do we wear black when someone dies?”

“Good question! You all answer first—why do you think we wear black?”

One little girl raised her hand.

“Well, black is the absence of color, so maybe we’re trying to show the absence of the person that we’re feeling?”

You know what? I don’t know if that was the reason, but it sure is now.