Raising children in the Jewish desert

Last week, I traveled to Florida to pick up my daughter, Shaina, from winter camp. As one of the few Jewish children in Sioux Falls, Shaina receives much of her Jewish education through the Jewish Online School, Chabad’s online academy with over 1,000 full-time students from communities without Jewish schools. Opportunities like this camp are especially important for her to spend time in person with friends who share her values.
In her online class, Shaina has friends from cities around the world who, like her, are ambassadors for Judaism in their communities. She receives a stellar Jewish education while also gaining a broad view of the world. Among her classmates are friends from Providence, Rhode Island; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Bettendorf, Iowa; Voronezh, Russia; Holetown, Barbados, and Reykjavík, Iceland, to name just a few.
As parents, we constantly face choices about what to prioritize. If we want our children to be proud of their Jewish identity and well-educated—especially when they are such a minority—we must go that extra mile to provide them with every opportunity possible. Jewish parents in South Dakota know this all too well. If there is a Jewish experience for our children, chances are the parents are involved in making it happen or have moved mountains to ensure their children could attend.
This mindset is what made it so important for us that Shaina be able to attend a Jewish overnight camp, where she could spend quality time with friends like her in an environment she knows and loves.
It brought to life a fascinating dialogue between Moses and Pharaoh from this week’s Torah portion. Moses demands that Pharaoh let the people go to worship G-d, but Pharaoh responds by saying he will only allow the adult men to go, claiming the children didn’t need to worship G-d. Moses firmly insists that they would all go to serve G-d: “We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and daughters.”
This has been the cornerstone and secret of Jewish identity since the very beginning—the emphasis on the role of our children, their education, and their spiritual journey. It’s a powerful reminder that we cannot rely solely on the adults; ensuring the next generation’s commitment to our heritage is the key to our future.